By Amanda Cipriano
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Johns Hopkins University opened its third historical exhibit on Tuesday at the Welch Medical Library that features artifacts and writings from doctors and nurses from the school who served in World War I.
Nancy McCall, the director of the school’s medical archives, said during the event that the opportunity to create the exhibit came in 2015 when archivists started looking into the World War I collections of Base Hospital 18, the Hopkins unit. McCall said she found many narratives that documented the roles of individuals at the base.
“It was an opportunity to work in our own collections,” McCall said. “We are so often having to follow requests of researchers and this was our own project.”
Paul Rothman, the chief executive officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine, said that the Hopkins and the Great War exhibits were the first cross-campus exhibition for the school.
“Not only did Hopkins have an affect on the war, but the war had an affect on Hopkins,” Rothman said.
The exhibit shows the community the importance of Hopkins to the war effort and gives students a visual of how medicine practices differed. McCall said that she is finding more student interest in learning about medicine before technology.
McCall said that World War I nurses were extremely vigilant and careful in saving all the documentation.
In a presentation titled “Dispatches from the Second Battlefield: Four Hopkins Nurses Tell Their World War I Stories,” historian of medicine Marian Moser Jones showed the war from a nurse’s eyes and the effect it had on each woman. All four nurses included graduated from Hopkins Nursing School in either 1902 or 1906.
“It’s important to talk about them because they really did distinguish themselves and did amazing things,” Jones said.
In the journals, nurses shared their stories of terror and working fast under pressure. One nurse wrote about how in a hospital of 400 wounded soldiers, there were only seven nurses. While trying to prioritize injuries to address, nurses had to listen to the war outside the hospital.
Jones said that World War I was the first time the United States had organized teams of professionals to triage and develop scientific methods to save soldiers.
The nurses were practicing beyond the top of their license because of the lack of medical help. When the nurses returned, they were offered free public health education.
Over 10,000 nurses served in the war zone and over 21,000 nurses were inducted to the U.S. Army.
McCall said that descendants of those who served in the war donated nearly all of the items displayed. The hospital deposited the photo diaries, letters, uniforms and much more to the Medical Archives in 1978.
“A most remarkable aspect of this exhibit is provenance,” McCall said.