To Katherine Breckinridge, 18 May 1919

     digitized, transcribed, encoded, and annotated by Colleen Bailey

Vic_sur_Aisne,
May 18, 1919.

My darlingest mother:

The past week has been of the busiest getting my work
organized for the child welfare program of the coming months. We had our
first baby clinic Saturday morning. All the mothers I had rounded up in
Vic came and brought others I had not reached. We are already supplying
extra diet to several and have brought back breast milk that was nearly gone
to two one so entirely that the baby needs no other milk and one so nearly
that he takes only half the cows milk he formerly needed. This is only the
beginning. Our C.R.B supplies come this week and we have arranged in the
larger villagexss for the supplementary meal to be served every school day.
All of this is my happy work but I get the liveliest cooperation from
the Directrice and from Dr. Fraser, who examines my babies, mothers and
school children, and from the efficient women dentists now attached to our
unit who are putting in order the terrible teeth condition, and we have a
list we are gradually compiling of children who need minor operations such
as tonsils removed in this damp climate it is estimated that ninety nine
per cent of the children need these operations and we often find them hardly
able to breathe, and never through the noses, and with difficulty throat ughughough
the mouths) circumcionssiosions, etc to send at one at one to the barrack hospital as soon
as it is erected at Blerancourt. Of course theer and Miss Smith are attached to our unit just to do the
curative work in our various dispensaries work is more preventive than
curative. Dr. Fraser and Miss Smith are attached to our unit just to do the
curative work in our various dispensaries and they are both splendid at it.
Miss Smith is a very efficient nurse and I like her immensely. Bu the
definite program of seeking to keep the children weelll by providing the
needed proteins and fats in the diet, removing defects, raising the
standard of hygiene, teaching mouth hygiene, etc. etc. all of that is what
swwe aerre cooperating in to bring out the full value of thsi child hygiene
program which I have much at heart . Above all we must make it a permanent
thing to leave behind us. That is the best of Miss Morgan's and Mrs. Dike's
ideals, they do want to leave a permanent bit of constructive work in the
country behind them and back up anything that is towards that end. Now the
French had excellent dispensary work of several kinds before the way for their
babies. The first thing I have done has been to inform myself in all directions
available of the work they had initiated and plan to have ours follow their
lines and supplement them. I have subscribed for their Presse Medicale and
another review claalled the Naurrisson in which articles by their leading
child physicians appear and brought a number of their books by similar men
and ineqquired of all the local people capable of informing me. They had a
fund public division known as the Asissistance Publique which, among other
things, paid a physician in the county seat of every county to weigh every
baby brought to the "mMMairie" (the central public town hall sort of place
awwhere the records are in every village) once in two weeks and give free
advice and to pay monthly visits to the little nourrissons §  left out to be
cared for by foster mothers because their own mothers had to work or were
indifferent. There is far too much of that in France. As this weighing
only went on at the county seat babies from the remoter vilages did not
profit by it as a rule. But it was a good step in the right direction and
in the larger cities there were excellent clinics which gave free advice in
child care. There was also an organization started by a man named Boudin and
manitained by private philanthropy known as the Gouttes de Lait, which
operated also only in larger centers. There was one at Soissons. Through
this modified milk at cost was supplied bottle fed babies, but no instruction
went with it and the mothers were never taught to handle the milk themselves.
Now you will see the weakness in the whole thing. There was no follow up
work and that is thet only thing that gets large results. They have absolutely
no system of public health nurses to do it and almost no trained nurses as
we understand the word with whom to build up such a system. But they are

the most receptive people, the quickest to adopt new ideas and profit by
them when once presented, the freest from hampering conventional and have
made a beginning, as I wrote you in previous letters, in some of the large
cities with work in the homes and visiting nursing. Now that many of their
women have learned through the war larger conceptions of the responsaiibilities
devolving upon them and that all men and women who think at all realize that
France must take drastic steps to offset her terrible losses, public health
nursing will become a fact, not perhaps altogether with our standards at
first, but with a good beginning. My plan for our work in our villages is
to coordinate it with all that is good that htey have done and will resume
doing when times get normal again, and then supplement it with the contribu
tion which only public health nursing can bring. In other words I want to
take their Asiiiiiisistance publique and get in closest relations with it when
it returns to working order, weld our clinic in with is, ande so demonstrate
the value of the follow up work in what I am doing that the people will not
be willing ever to do without visiting nursing again and will add that to
the general program of their Asiiiiiisistance Publique. Our carefully kept records
and theareare results that will speak for themselves and the result of the demonstra
tion in public health nursing, especially as a part of child hygiene, will
mean its public adoption in this section. Should it afterwards be adopted
throughout France by mans of the Asiiiiiisistance Publique France would have a
more comprehensive system than any of ours in America. She has the machinery
and she always has the good will. Now my Committee is generously allowing
me what I need for this demonstration and I count on bringing my part in it
to a conclusion by next spring or the latter part of the next winter. Before I
withdraw I am to have a French Nurse with me and I will leave her in the
field carrying on the work and for her salary and expensiees our Committee will
be responsible for as long as seems advisable or until they too withdraw.
For of course we are only here temporarily but our relations are
so harmoniousl and happy with all about us and we do so admire and love
the people of our villages with whom we work, and their unbreakable
enthusiasms, that I think a little bit of America will always stay on
behind us in lvooving memory long as after we are gone.
We had the school teachers of three of the larger villages to
dinner with us Friday night. We have powerful friends in most of these
teachers who are secretaries to the Mairie as well and whose deeductaation and
general enlightenelmement is much beyond that of similar people in most of our
rural communities. There are a few horrible exceptions in the shape of
several drunken old men. Most of the girls are taught by women and most of
the boys by men for every village of "commune" of little villages of any size
has two schools and two teachers. We have been instrumental in helping to
start these schools in many villages and providing books and desks . Two
other features of our child welfare progrmaam which are developing coincident
ally with mine are a small traveling library of French children's favorite
books which Braly has gotten together (she being at home a librarian) and
which goes about in a camion with groceries and a traveling camion kinder
garten which we are soon to have as a gifs
through the interest of Miss Alice Parsons whose interest lie along that
direction. The dentists and Dr. Fraser and Miss Smith come through the
cooperation of the American Woman's Hospital Association which will also
hve the hospital at Blerancourt. Yes Rosalie Slaughter Morton is on the
Board of that organization and so is my friend Dr. Kinney over here of whom
I have written you. No single peiieiece of work in our unit is better to my
thinking than that of the dentists who are teaching prophylaxis at every step
and creating a desire for preventive dentistry that should affodmemer a lucrative
practice for some French dentist some day if one can be found to settle here.

The big scales for weighing and mesa all the older children in our
villages that I expected from the Red Cross did not materialize, that is
the scales that came were small, grocery or baby scales. I sent a hurry
call up to Paris to our committee to get a big scales and send down to me
in the next camion. So I hope they will come this week. We will weight and
measure all our children, keeping on our files records those who are markedly
underweight or have defects until we have brought them up to standard or
remedied the defects. The special meal of meat and vegetables of the C.R.B.s
is only for this group of special children.
I think I should like Miss Crandall to read of the work I am be-
ginning here for I wrote her I had some such plan in view and I will never
have the time to write to anyone at length but you. Please send her this
letter, Care National Organization for Public Health Nursing, 156 Fifth Ave.
New York, asking her to read and return it to you. She won't mind I am sure
the personal tonnotnote in it meant for you. I will write up the work in full for
the Public Health Nurse as promised when it has profresses enough to de_
serve a full article. nothing written of itof it here of cause is for publication
Later. I closed this letter to go to lunch, for this is Sunday, our
one day of leaiisure usually, and I had been in my room all morning. Now it
is nearly dinner time. Five of us drove over to the forest of Compiegne to
see the lilies of the valley in bloom and then to the chateau of Pierrefonds
of which I enclose postcards. We found ourselves in a group of French soldiers
women and children, reapll sightseers, with an old guide and guide books
like in pre_war days. As we came out of the wonderful pile and back to
our car a pretty French girl said that the ladies of the British Red Cross
in whose territoyrry we found ourselves (Pierrefioonds is in the Oise and suffer_
ed very little from the war but near it are some devastated villages like
ours and there were many refugees, hence the Red Cross) had sent a reeqquest
that we stop with them for tea. So we went over to their place and found a
jolly group, all cordaiiaial hospitality, and among them one who said she was a
nurse and was doing special district work in the villages with the babies
under three and having them in to be weighed, etc. I liked her immensely
and when she spoke of Truby King of New Zealand and I broke into praises of
Lady Plunkett's share in his work, she said Lady Plunkett was her sister. So
it was well I had praised her. We hadn't been introduced all around, English
fashion I suppose not to- so in parting I asked her for name because I
had urged her to come over and see our work and have another talk. So she
said it was Blackwood and I said: "Goodbye, Miss Blackwood," and heard later
she was Lady Hermoine Blackwood. She was first rate. Their organization by
the way in the Comite Britannique of the French Red Cross. My letters seem
lately to be full of organizations. It is good to come in touch with others
besides our own. I am going over to see the Smith unit in the Somme soon and
see what Miss Clement is doing in public health nursing there. The program I
am evolving suits our local conditions I think and can be modified as need
be as it progresses but it is helpful to see how others have met their
local conditions.
The flowers now are glorious, eseppepecially the lilacs, and our friends
bring us great bunches every day. I think I wrote you of my godson Roland
Moutaillier. He is a charming baby and I bought him a perambulator when I
passed through Paris on my way back from LilleLille. He needed it so I couldn't
resist getting it, although it was an extravagance. I had to give him a
name at the christening in addition to the others and chose Jean for grand-
father Breckinridge. It had to be a saint name you see. Now they have de-
cided to call him Jean, instead of Roland. His parents have given me the
most wonderful linkstand made from the shell of a Germane aeroplan by a poilu § 
who had been a gun smith and a lamp made from a shell, all beaten by hand and

a vase ditto, carved all over. They had two each of these and they were their
most cherished possessions, buried when they evacuated. I was mose terrere_
mendously touched when they told me they had decided they wanted me to have
one each like theirs and carry them back to America with me and keep always.
At that time they did not know about the perambulocatatoIrr had bought for Jean
either as I had not told them of it then.
So you want a "nice bayonet." I have a very nice one, the same I
picked up out of a dump heap and use as a poker. You shall have it. If you
really want one of those dreadul Boshe helmets I will bineieinbgg or send one to
you too. I went out and picked one up on the place when I read your letter
and set it aside. They are everywhere now but more and more are being put
into dumps and some day they will be carted off. I have a number of the
charming shells, which make such pretty vases, more than I can carry back.
And I hear, I don't know on what authority, that the French don't want their taken out of the country, only Boshe ones. We continue to have the most
distressing accidents from explosives left all around. The last was Fridyaay.
A French corporal guarding some Boshe prisoners filling trenches in the
fields leaned over to pick some flowers in a thick clump and put his hands
on one of those dreadful granades and realized as he did that he had struck
the pin releasing it so threw himself down. But he did not escape the whole
charge. Some of it tore through his through his side. They came for us and of course
the doctor was not around. We always take them to the military hospital at
Compiegne anyway. So Dr. Ward, one of the dentists, a chauffeur-Miss Hewitt_
and I went after him in a camion and as it was not the one which holds the
stretcher, that being off somewhere, we put in a canvas cot and mattress.
The soldiers had done a first aid dressing on dreadful wounds which we
supplemented but did not remove, gave him morphine, a stimulant, and carried
him the twenty kilometers to Compiegne . It was a ghastly trip for he was
quite conscious and suffered terments, though Miss Hewitt drove with great
care. Towards the last he went ot pieces and began to bleed a lot. I don't
think he would have survived another five kilometers. They operated at once
and our latest news is that they expect him to live. Making that trip with
him and others as I have done it was come over me so clearly why the Germans
bombed the hospitals near the lines. In fact they sometimes left notes saying:
"If you don't want to be bombed move further back." They knew well enough that
every mile further back meant the loss of just so many lives of wounded men.
Another esxxplosive case is that onffe one of our women at Tartier who
put some wood in her on her fire and had it explode back at her. The explosive
are everywhere.
I have written the Prefectures of the Jura and the Vosges for
quotations on goats as they were gotaat coun tries and are near Switzerland
and not destroyed. I will write you and Aunt Florence and Aunt Jane full
details about how I spend your monyeey on them when I have done it, and of
course my letters to you are always for Aunt Rachel too, so I won't write
a separate one to her.
I enclose a nootte from Lees written just as she sailed from Brest.
I am always so interested in your notes and e enclosures, paper clippings
and everything.

Devotedly your child, Mary

Sinvrcece I closed this letter we have had dinner to which dropped in the
following persons: Mr. and Mrs. Morganthau, passing through the devastated
areas, three American officers, the mayor of Vic. The last was the only one
we knew was coming. For an isolated place one sees a good many people.
Lees did see him, Harry Pickup, in Paris last winter.Lees did see him, Harry Pickup, in Paris last winter.