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WOMEN By Muargaret M. Lukes 1ehe, 1 By ¥ubile Ledzer Co N ONE was dreaming about ths war that bright sunny day tha tor's stenographer slowly got from her typewriter and with a wabbly little prayer for courage stole to t laboratory door to ask it there wasn’t any little thing in there she ¢ould co. It was a day like all other days. A ¥et that day and that door have tieir place in history. The doctor’s stenographer had incurable urge in her long, slim fin €ers to get at the ’scope, the pipettes and the tubes, and the doctor—surely he must have had a vision of the Wiith in slim white hands—suddenl; said. “Why not?” And so the young woman who stood tremulously on the threshold was invited in. There were laughs and heartaches and mistakes in pl at first But in the end a faith and a woman’s infinite for detail and scrupulous produced the first woman Covy an Nty doctor’s capacity obedience Wuacteriologist e That was at least ten years ago Though eminent men in research work &re agreed that this was the origin of the woman laboratory worker, none can venture to say just exactly when the first doctor did take his stenog- rapher into his laboratory and teach her, between taking dictation and clicking out letters on a typewriter, to take blood counts and to make the ana to a doctor's diag the ‘event was sig- ses so vital nosis nificant Howev: Blazing a New Trail The young woman who stood so tim idly at the house of science and was finally allowed to come in the back way blazed a trail. Today im every large base hospital and cantonment in America the slim, deft fingers ot women are fighting death and disease with the microscope, the culture tube and ne. In 'Fort McPherson, Georgla, Miss Elsie High, formerly of Phoenixville, Pa., and now of the great world war, js bottling 'soldier hlood to bé shipped overseas that it may flow into the 'veins of American own life’s blood has *d the fields of | France. Way in Camp Travis, Texas, a little o girl, Mrs. J. Owen Clark, is the deadly pneumonia germ taken in lives of young sol- toll exéeeding casualties on our of honor. These are merely famples of n work so vast America ls just beginning to hear about it. Callod bty the surgeon general of United States three or four women bauteriologists, or technicians, have teen assigned to every military hospital in tho country. And at the same time, in some cases like mush- rooms in the nigh3, training schools for lahoratory technicians have sprung U all over the country. k the wartime strength to small and scaJtered band of \omen laboratory workers has béen vecruited. Since that momen- tous day when the first woman braved the doctor and those tubes most dear to Wim other women took the step t60, of course. In fact, long before the fury of the war broke, in a few medical schools, large hospitals, mu- nicipal and commercial laboratories and in some cases in their own pri- vate laboratories women were quietly working in the fields of research. But, taking the country as a whole, remu- neration was small and, what is even more heart-crushing, opportunity was limited. In spite of this, however. many have achieved notable success. But these were scattered achieve: ments. There were plenty of men to do man’s work, Unquestionably it is akreed it was the great world war that opened wide the doors of laboratories va heroes whose diers army, his s which the NEW BRITAIN DAILY MERALD, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1018, IVIN NEW PLACE Watching a blood reaction under roscope in the famous typhoid test to the women of the world. But, what 1s immeasurably more important in these hours when war days seem numbered, having at last been invited in by the front way women may take off their hats and stay. Two years ago if you had asked a high school girl to define bacteriology she would have facetiously told you, “we had one, but it died.” Yet to- day, because youth is always inter- ested in a practically new and major vocation, from her you can find out just what you want to know. What is bacteriology? In the lan- guage of the schoolgirl it is recog- nizing the “bug” or germ that causes the various ailments to which the human flesh is heir. Ang what is a laboratory technician so glibly spoken of by the same young person? “She is a person trained to handle the me. chanical work in a laboratory, but if she takes advanced courses and then works under a doctor she is on the road to becoming a bacteriologist.” In the meantime editors of women'’s magazines are besieged not with queries of what anything is, but just “how to get into it.” “That is all very well,” says the far-seeing one, who is not a member of the fourth-year high, but an in- tensely practical “older woman,” and then it is this calm Investigator who raises that question of woman's per- manence in the laboratory. “She Has Come to Stay” The question carried bodily down to Dr. John A. Kolmer, eminent writer and pathologist, chief of the laboratories of the Polyclinic and Mu- nicipal Hospitals in Philadelphia and professor in the school of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Doctor Kolmer is nationally known for important discoveries in the fields of Infectious diseases. Lately his name has been before the public in reference to a successful serum antitoxin for influenza. Doctor Kolmer is doubly fitted to speak on what this new im- petus means to women, for it was he who was the founder of what was prob- ably the first organized class of women laboratory worlkers in the country. This eminent professor answered my question decidedly. “Woman,” he a, foothold in the she will never crease in the has gained a laboratory now, and lose it. And this in- technicians has come Exhumed “Sun Temple” By Arthur WHITE-BEARDED, vigorous man. in a faded khaki suit and under a broad-brimmed hat, is bossing the be- ginning of an excavation job in south- western Colorado, in Mesa Verde Na- (onal Park. 1t might be the begin- . of work on a house, so prosaic- ally is evervthing carried on. There are scraper men, and men with picks shovels, and the man with the peard is everywhere among directing courteously but with of the expert who knows what and white them the air he wants. Thstead of creating a site for a new I ouse, however, the boarded man, who {s Dr. Jesse Walter Fewkes, of Smith- conian Institution, is bringing to light the sand-covered ruin of an ancient building of pre-Columbian days—one of the homes of the “first Americans.” It is a commonplace enough scene at peginning of his work—the day ers and their horses and outfit tered about an ordinary mound. Put three or four months later, if we should chance to go back to the scene o (nese prosaic activities, it would b found that the ruins of a huge bulld- ing had been uncovered, and tbat the andiwork of the lost people of the couthwest had been laid bare to tuture generations to marvel over. Archeology has been the lifework of Doctor Fewlkes, but it was not until he was past his sixtleth year (he is sixly-seven now) that he took up the tack that was to bring him his great- est measure of fame—the restoration of the cliff ruins and the unearthing of the ancient pueblo dwellings of Mesa Verde National Park. His first work in that wonderful archeological feid consisted of the restoration of gpruce Tree House and Clff Palace. fwo large houses of ithe baloony or the Chapman cliff dwelling type. These were the first houses discovered in the region which the Government has now st aside for the preservation of its ar- cheological treasures. CIiff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling ever discov- ered. It is virtually a cliff city, en- sconced in an enormous cave in the wall of a cliff hundreds of feet high. Spruce Tree House is in a cavern at the bottom of one of the innumerabie canyons of the Mesa Verde, and Is smaller than CIiff Palace but not less interesting. These ruins were ruins indeed when Doctor Fewkes undertook their restoration. Vandals and relic- hunters had made them little more than shapeless masses of debris. With infinite patience and skill Doctor Fewkes directed the work of clearing away the rubbish and restoring these houses to something like their oris: inal form. Out of the mass emerged the buildings that stand today. with kivas cleared of their rubbish, and chambers and towers as they must have stood in the days of the Jost race of cliff dwellers—the mystevious people whose disappearance has never beea solved. While working on CIiff Palace the attention of Doctor Fewkes became fastened on a mound across the canyon, a mile or more from the scene of his operations. The mound was at the in- tersection of CIiff and Fewlkes canyons on top of the mesa. Trees grew out ot the mound in great profusion, and the ordinary obser would decl that everything was just as nat had lett it. But Dr. Fewikes felt th beneath this great monnd was the ruin of a building which mnight eslablish the key to ancther kind of life in the Mesa Verde country. fe begun dig- ging into the mound two years ags. ve Mecasuring a cubic centimeter of testing fluid in a pipette to stay, because woman has picked or rather been picked for a field that grows more and more fertile. I am willing to predict medical men who come home from the war will find great things to pursue further in re- search. Army experience is teaching splendid lessons. All of this cannot help reflecting itself later in woman's progress.” ‘But even with her position as- sured,” was the next question put to Doctor Kolmer, “how far do you think & woman can go? ' Do you think, for instance, it would be possible for her to make any big, important finds: for instance, such as isolating the in- fantile paralysis germ would be?” “I am not willing to set any limits on what women can or will do in the fields of research,” was the answer. “To date they have made valuable contributions to the work, but have done no really big things, it is true. But that is because the term of office has been so short and the opportunities have been few. It is claimed women are excellent detailists and will do just what you say when you turn your back, but that they do not strike out in original paths of thought. Well, for that matter, how many men strike out in original paths of thought? No, I am willing to match a woman in research with'a man. Give her time. 1t is fifty-fifty. You cannot tie talent to sex.” Looking around America now it 1s easily seen the surgeon general of the United States army believes in women. To realize the importance of this it is in Colorado and uncovered the mightiest and most impressive pueblo ruin in the south- west—called the Sun Temple, from the fact that in one of its walls was found @ shrine contain'ag a fossil palm leaf, the lines of which evidently were taken as replicas of the sun’s shiped by the mesa and cliff dwellers, The ruins of the D-shaped Sun Temvle, as they stand uncovered, are 122 feet long and the walls stand twelve feet bigh. There was no entiance to the Types of Indian bands assisting in er for collodial gold used to test out drecd necessary to know tie navy does not accept women in its laboratories. The men who formerly did the work girls are doing in the army hospitals here are serving with base hospitals abroad. Counting the bacteria in war wounds s a vitally important part of the Dakin-Carrel irrigation treatment that is saving so many thousands of lives and limbs in France. These men are doing that In the meantime their sisters in America collaborate at a distance of three thousand miles. Miss Elsie High, of Phoenixville, who is typing bloods to be bottled and sent overseas, was one of the first girls to answer her country’s call. Indeed she was very much at home in the big hospital at Fort Me- Pherson when the stirring news came from over there that it would be pos- sible for American . soldiers here in traiping to give their good, strong blood to the boys in France who had 5o freely spent their own. “Matching Bloods” There are many intricate prelim- inaries to the delicate transfusion operation when the boy who gives and the boy who receives the blood happen to he separated three thousand miles. The process is called “matching bloods,” and is one of the things taught to the student in the laboratories. Here is in- stance of the importance of the tech niclan’s work: The blood of the donor and the recipient are mixed. It one is incompatible the mixture by an spinal fluid agglutinates, or, in plainer words, can be seen to tie itself in knots under the microscope. A false finding— that is, calling bloods compatible that are really incompatible—would cause death if the incompatible blood were used for transfusion. The blood sent from here, of course, can only be tested for purity and normality and is “matched” on the other side. It is preserved in sodium citrate and used in cases where there is loss of blood through amputation or a seri- ous surgical operation. Typing the pneunionia germ very important work being done in the camps by the girls just now. Those who know tell us there are four types of lobar pneumonia. A swab or specimen is taken from the sick soldier’s nose or throat. If from this the technician is able to identify the type it is possible to get an anti- toxin to fight it and save the soldier’s life. Other vital tests are made. In United States Base Hospital No. 14, Tort Oglethorpe, Georgia, Mrs. Ada Hetherington Latham, of Philadel- phia, is doing very important work. is a In the Government Service But, of course, it isn't all work and no play for these young women. And sometimes things happen that are not supposed to be playful at all, but— Well, read this letter that made its appearance from one of the camps: “I wish you had been here the other day. A boy fell down stairs in the laboratory with a box of polka dot rats. They had been inoculated and they all had purple dots on their tails, one for one kind of disease and two for another. They all got loose. It was a scream, but hard on Cap- tain C—." And then there are some letters the names of the authors of which do not for obvious reasons have to be deleted by the censor. There is this one, for instance, from Mrs. J. Owen Clark, the little southern girl typing pneumonia in the base hospital at Camp Travis, Texas “We had two vaudeville shows,” she writes, “that we might have been sceing in New York. We have a lovely, airy room on an inclosed porch, with a victrola and magazines. Zvery Tuesday night they come for in the ambulance and take us to the Y. M. C. A. to go swimming. There are dances every Saturday night and plenty of horseback riding. us “All day long we can see the air- planes flying over from Kelly Field. It is a wonderful sight. We have a good cook here. At night we get apples and gingerbread.” The girls arc| quartered in the nurses’ barracks/and receive $60 a month over and above transportation and maintenance. There is plenty of hard work, but in all cases it seems the living conditions are ideal. Perhaps it is and perhaps it isn’t the lure of Government service that has tempted so many young women to take laboratory courses. One thing is certatn: Barring nursing the has been no other way for a woman to see service in an army hospital. And the technician’s course has the grace of being in cases only eight weeks long and six months In others. some Life in a Laboratory Whatever may be the lure of the laboratory, certainly all types of women are being attracted there. A visit to one of the classes in a large city hospital was a revelation. Be- side a little war bride was a trained nurse; bending over a Bunsen burner were a Belgian refugee and a little Japanese girl and in the far corner a doctor's wife worked with a pretty miss, who, the professor told me frankly, admitted she only came to get out of a rut. There, in crisp white laboratory gowns, with a late after- noon sun glowing softly on the red liquid in the crystal tubes and on the big dull copper distiller, they all looked very learned indeed. Indeed, there are things about a laboratory that make the visitor feel very unlearned. In the first place, they are busy with their pipettes and their tubes and they leave you alone. And you roam around and pick up a student’s notebook. A glance through it ‘discovered appalling things. One is “micrococcus catarrhalis” and the other “polymorphonuclear neutro- phile.” But a kind student eventually comes to your aid. The first turned out to be the reason for a cold in the head and the second just an innocent little red blood cell. “Oh, you find out things around here,” confided the kind-hearted student, who had just succeeded in deftly cutting something she assured me was at least a millionth of an inch thick. “You should have been around the day we were learning to jab for blood counts. Two of us were,learning to take blood from each other to test. It was our first try at it and we were very proud of our results. We sub- mitted them. A few minutes later the professor came calmly in and wanted to know ‘who’s this in here dying of pernicious anemia? According to our count we two great big healthy hu- mans were due to pass away at any moment with anemia. lots of funny Reveals Clift Dwelling of the “First buildir save by ladders, and it was for ceremonial purposes alone. A big pine tree growing on the mound which covered the ruin was sawed down and 865 rings have been counted in its trunk. It took at least 200 years for the winds to fill the Sun Temple with nd drift, before the 365-year-old tree began to sprout. Probably the Sun Temple was built about the time of Columbus. Last year Doctor Fewkes began ex- the archeolozical explorations of the West . . Temple. cavating more mounds, which promise even greater wonders than the Sun He took the covering of earth from a huge rectangular building about five miles from Spruce Tree camp. There are nine other mounds in this vicinity. Lvidently there was a veritable city here on top of the Nearby is a circular mound of great size, which evidently was utilized as a reservoir. When the mounds of this great group are all uncovered, visi- tors to the Mesa Verde National Park will have mysteries to brood over which not even Pompeii can excel in point of human interest. Who were these people of the mesa top, and the neople of the cliffs? Were they re- lated, and why did they vanish and whero dld they go? In order to an- swer some of these querles, Doctor Fewkes began to give bonfire talks mesa. to the tourists in Mesa Verde National Park a year or two ago. Now Stephen T. Mather, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, who is in charge of the na- tional parks, says these talks should be made permanent features, and Doc- tor Fewkqs is more than willing to continue his personal services. In the Mesa Verde country Doctor Fewkes is the friend of every rancher for miles around. He is interested in the personal affairs o every one of his workmen. He unconsciously instills an enthusiasm for archeology which evi- dences itseif In many remarkable ways among those surrounding him. Farm boys who have never been outside of southwestern Colorado, but who have worked with Doctor Fewkes in Mesa Verde National Park, can discourse learnedly cn the archeological affairs of Egypt as well as of this country. In the age-old haunts of the clifi-dwelle: ; ] N BATTLES AGAINST DEATH “Then another day I did a blood count on a cracker salesman, and he was so relieved to get it over with he reached down under the bed and opened a big sample case and offered me any kind of a cracker I wanted. I think when he heard blood count he thought we were going to chop oft his head, and when he found I just pricked him he was so reckless with joy he didn’t care what became of his crackers.” The girls have classes in the wards and probably have lots of funny ex- periences. But this is only incidental. The theme that runs through these courses is to take your work seriously or you might as well stop before you begin. The courses pursued by the average student are three—laboratory, technique, clinical pathology and baoc teriology and serology. These cover blood counts, making cultures, routine analysis, typing diphtheria, pneumo- nia, typhoid, malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases. They include blood typing and making vacecines. It fs easily seen there is not much time for fooling. To the State of Pennsylvania be Jongs the honor of not waiting for the war to make wide way for these girls in the laboratory. Two years ago the Legislature enacted a law providing that all hospitals and institutions caring for the sick and injured im- stall a well-equipped laboratory to be in charge of a pathologist and tech- nician. It was then- the Polyclinic Hospital of Philadelphia distinguished jtself by jumping into the bredch, and Doctor Kolmer, pathologist at the Polyclinie, founded the first organized classes fur women in laboratory work. Since the outbreak of the war other institutions in the pio. eer eity have installed these courses. Notable among these are the University ¢ Pennsyl« vania, the Woman's Medical College, Temple University and the city Board of Health. The course of the Board of Health is conducted by Dr. C. Y. White, head of the city laboratory, and is noteworthy in that the classes are free and that enlisting with Uncle Sam is a condition of joining. At the same time these courses have been installed in various institutions in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Chi- cago and other large cities. In spite of the fact that “graduates” are being steadily turned out, the sup- ply is not able to keep up with the demand. Only four weeks ago a call went out from the bureau of sanitary service, American Red Cross for women, to do laboratory work in areas joining the camps. In the case of a bacteriologist the compensation ranges from $125 to $150 a month, with trans- portation, but even with these induce- ments candidates for service are at a premium. Clear Call to Service And leaving the fields of this Gov- ernment service one hears the clear call of the civilian hospital, the mu- nicipal and commercial laboratory and the university sanctum of research. Al ready it has been answered in our large cities by women who have achieved notable success. In New York we hear of Dr. Anna Willlams and Dr. Mirlam Olmsted, of the New York Board of Health; in Philadelphia there is Miss Mary E. Triste, of the Polyclinic; Miss Mary E. Pennington, Dr. E. Quintard St. John and Dr. B. M. Meine, of the Woman's College Hos- pital. In Chicago there is Dr. Ruth Tunnicliff. These are the voices in the air for women in research. They are bigger than the war, for the war is only a means to an end. And opportunities for human beings, regardless of sex, represent the magnificent distances of time against which battles do not pre- vail. Americans” Doctor Fewkes has delved in all party of the world, and he gives of his knowledge freely and without ostenta. tion. He studied at Leipsic, Germany, and was assistant in the museum o& comparative zoology at Harvard, ang has been ethnologist in the U'mua States Bureau of Ethnology since 1895. He was in charge of the excavation and repair work on the Casa Grand ruin in Arizona, and he holds !'nl.n. degrees, being, among other things, : Knight of the Order of Isabella thy Catholic (Spain). He has livea vm.; the Hopis and other Southwest tribes and knows the red men of ‘: present as well as of the past. % Doctor Fewkes’s wife accompanies him on most of his expeditions and .knows Wwhat it means to live for weeks ina a desert camp. e L In the Same Boat I ONE of the big base hospitals o the army not long age g m:;v librarian was set to work by the Amer. ican Library Association. She wasg g very charming young woman, ang Vvery anxious to please all of her “cus. tomers,” though some of them dldn’t even wish to look at a book. In her rounds she approached one of the pa. tients and he declined to be interested in her wares. At the next cot she stopped and offered its occupant a book: Vhat's it about?” the patient asked, “Oh, this is Bambi.” sald 1hé libra. rian. “It's about a girl who marrieq & man without his having unything to eay about it.” “Hold on there,” shouted the man who had declined all books. He raised himself up on lis elbow and out his hand. “Glve me It's my autobirgraphy.” that ~