66. Poultices at Joyce Green Hospital

Key words/phrases: The Nursing Record, probationer nurses, Queen Victoria, preliminary training, kaolin poultices.

No. 66

An extract that I was reading recently in an on-line copy of The Nursing Record, (Jan 10, 1889 Vol 2) declared that :

“Where possible, all probationer nurses will be given the opportunity to attend weekly lectures on nursing topics given by Matron, a sister or one of the medical staff. These will include subjects such as … (and here I have omitted the full list) … and the application of poultices.

Then, ( ... it continued ...) should she pass her “first year" examination - which is not normally difficult to do - she will be promoted to the rank of Junior Nurse and will be allowed to take temperatures, to do some of the dressings and to assist Sister with the bad cases.”

So my question here is : Do you remember being taught how to make and apply poultices ?

It certainly seems difficult to grasp that nearly 80 years further on from then - at a time when Queen Victoria was still on the throne - that student nurses were still being taught to apply kaolin poultices during their preliminary training.

However, perhaps what is even more amazing is that kaolin poultices are still available for use today in pre-prepared foil-wrapped form or in tubs.

Of course many of you reading this will recall poultices being used on the medical wards of Joyce Green Hospital, in the management of chest problems. Do you remember cutting off lengths of lint from a roll, the corners of which would then be mitred and cutting off an almost-matching sized piece of gauze (or unfolding some gauze swabs for the same purpose) ? Simultaneously you would be heating your tin of kaolin in a saucepan of boiling water or in the ward instrument-steriliser. Then with all the deftness you could muster, spreading the kaolin evenly on to the surface of the lint before putting the gauze piece on top of the kaolin to prevent it from sticking to your patient’s skin ... and finally, folding the inch-wide edges of the lint over to finish off the procedure ?

Then the poultice had to be taken as quickly as possible to the patient’s bedside and subsequently applied to his/her chest, their side or wherever the warmth was required. Perhaps you were taught to take it to their bedside between two warm dinner plates or in a pre-warmed stainless steel kidney dish or container ?

If you had half a dozen or even more of these to make and apply during your day shift or night shift no doubt you developed your own routine for getting these ready and into place ? If you were lucky you sometimes had an nursing auxiliary with you who was experienced in preparing these in the ward kitchen or clinical room ?

But setting aside your recollections of how you used to manage to fit ‘creating’ these poultices into your otherwise busy schedule, I doubt that you will have forgotten the benefit of these to some of your patients of long ago and the sheer symptomatic and psychological relief that they got from these ‘labours of love’ that were created in the wards of Joyce Green Hospital ?

65. A friend in need is a friend indeed.

Key words/phrases: Ex-nurse and novelist Monica Dickens, Charles Dickens, St Paul's Girl's School London, U.S. Naval Officer Roy Stratton of Massachusetts, Rev.Chad Varah of The Samaritans organisation, Church of St Stephen Walbrook London, Mr Catchpole, S.R.N, Joyce Green Hospital, “Emma Chisit.”

No. 65

"She fed on gossip and scandal and if you had some to impart you could always be sure of an audience from Nurse Horrocks, and when there was none, she would readily concoct some intrigue to keep herself going."

So wrote Monica Dickens, the ex-nurse and novelist, in “One Pair of Feet” (1942). Monica, a great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens, rejected her upper middle class background when she expelled from St Paul's Girl's School in London and decided to go into “service” as a cook and servant.

Soon afterwards she became a student nurse in one of the London teaching hospitals and later wrote her account of life as a trainee nurse. She left nursing soon afterwards and did various other jobs, many of which provided inspiration for her future novels.

In 1951 she married a U.S. naval officer and they moved to New England where they adopted two girls. Roy Stratton died in 1985, at which time Monica returned to the U.K. where she continued to write, until her death on Christmas Day 1992.

Many people are familiar with her down-to-earth style of writing and perhaps you are one of the many nurses who have particularly enjoyed her nursing reminiscences however, something that fewer people will perhaps be aware of is that she helped to found the first American branch of the Samaritans in Massachusetts in 1974.

I am hazarding a guess here that she was inspired by the Anglican vicar, the Rev Chad Varah, who died in England last week and who single-handedly founded the phone-line help service for people contemplating suicide.

Later on the organisation became known as The Samaritans and after a period of rapid growth in Britain it provided a model for similar organisations in many other parts of the world.

In 1935 Varah conducted his first funeral whilst a young curate in Lincoln. The deceased person was a 14-year-old girl who had committed suicide because she thought that she suffering from a venereal disease whereas in fact she had simply started menstruating. The turning point for Varah however came in 1953 when he read in a newspaper that there were three suicides a day occurring in the Greater London area.

This coincided with an invitation to become the rector of St Stephen Walbrook, a Church of England benefice in the City of London. This beautiful Wren-designed church, sensitively rebuilt after wartime bombing, had no regular congregation and he accepted the appointment on the understanding that he would be free to use the crypt as the base for a new kind of outreach ministry - to desperate people.

He made it known that anyone contemplating suicide could phone him at any time of the day or night and soon calls began pouring in. Thus, what would later become a worldwide ministry was started by him and a small number of unqualified volunteers.

Chad Varah seems unlikely to be forgotten as the result of creating this lifeline organisation that has been responsible for saving millions of lives. However, it was whilst I was thinking about Monica Dickens’s account of her nursing experiences and the fact that she had formed the first branch of The Samaritans in the USA that I found myself once again thinking about the death of Mr Catchpole, SRN at Joyce Green Hospital.

He was - as some readers will know - the Theatre Superintendent in Joyce Green Hospital during the late 60s who for some reason (or reasons) took his own life in the operating theatre complex late one night.

One of the tragedies was that left a wife and several children behind but another was that he was a much-respected nurse who obviously desperately needed help but who didn’t cry out or who wasn’t heard.

In November 1964 Monica Dickens was autographing books for customers in a book shop in Sydney. She was approached by an Australian woman who handed her an open copy of a book and simply said: “Emma Chisit?” Monica misunderstood what the woman meant and inscribed the words “To Emma Chisit” inside the front cover, whereas in fact the customer was actually asking “How much is it ?”

A humorous mistake of course … but perhaps “Emma Chisit?” is still an extremely pertinent question this week as we remember the value that Chad Varah and his co-workers placed upon human life and also reflect perhaps upon the tragic loss of Mr. Catchpole at Joyce Green Hospital.

64. Poetry in motion at Joyce Green Hospital.

Poetry in motion at Joyce Green Hospital.

Key words/phrases: Head Gardener: “Mac” MacIntyre, Etienne de Grellet du Mabillier (a.k.a. Stephen Grellet), Lyon Military College, body-guard of Louis XVI, Queens District of New York City, Quakers, William Penn, George Fox, Illinois, New Orleans, Canada, Pope Pius VII, Czar Alexander 1st and the Kings of Spain and Prussia.

No. 64

I once shared an office with a health visitor who had a poster behind her desk of a sunset bearing the caption: “We don’t remember hours, we remember moments.”

Does that ring true in your experience ? Can you still remember brief experiences, thoughts or feelings that occurred long ago with an unexpected degree of clarity ? If so I suppose that this says something important about the profound impact that certain things have upon us at the time that they occur ?

One of the many things that I can remember happening to me whilst I was working at Joyce Green Hospital was being given a lift by “Mac” MacIntyre, the head gardener, in the Gardens Dept van down the main drive and out of the hospital. I was on my way to Dartford and he stopped just before the Porter’s Lodge by the main gate and offered me a lift.

It was a cold morning and I had just missed the bus that would have dropped me off at Dartford railway station. As we set off in the van, I thanked him for taking the trouble to stop and offer me a lift, to which his response was: “I shall pass this way but once.”

I asked him what he meant and in his rolling Scottish accent he said, “Do ye nae know tha ?” I shook my head to show that I didn’t, which prompted him into reciting part of a poem as he drove further down the drive. A verse of which - very strangely - has stayed in the back of my mind for the last 40 years:

“I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

But why did this verse have such an impact on me, so much so that it became burnt into my memory ? I suppose that it was one another of those occasions in early adulthood when the brevity of life dawned on me and “Mac”, who was also aware of how short life can sometimes be had “walked the talk” that day in offering me a lift.

The poem, by the way, is attributed to a certain Etienne de Grellet du Mabillier who later on in life became known as Stephen Grellet.

He was the son of a well-to-do counsellor to King Louis XVI, was raised as a Roman Catholic & was educated at the Military College in Lyon. At the age of 17yrs he joined the body-guard of Louis XVI but when he was sentenced to be executed in 1795 (during the French Revolution) he escaped & fled to Newtown, now part of Queens, New York City.

In 1796, impressed by the writings of William Penn, George Fox and the Quaker faith he joined the Society of Friends. He traded in New York and used his profits to finance a series of missionary tours extending through all the settled parts of the USA, west to Illinois, north into Canada and south to New Orleans.

Driven by his faith he developed an interest in education, in prison and hospital conditions, in provision for the poor and in various other social problems and he made it his business to inquire into prevailing conditions in every country that he visited. Somewhat surprisingly he was granted meetings with various rulers and dignitaries around the globe including Pope Pius VII, Czar Alexander I and the Kings of Spain and Prussia to whom he made recommendations for improvements in conditions wherever he could.

I suppose that it dawned upon him that he was only likely to be able to influence certain situations once in his life - as he passed by - and it seems to have made him determined to take action wherever it was possible, as “Mac” did that day when he had the chance on the main drive of Joyce Green Hospital and made that small gesture.