Women Surgeons at the Front

From the Illustrated London News, 29th June 1918.

LADIES' PAGE.

America has decided to send medical women as anaesthetists out to the base hospitals — that is, of course, well behind the firing line.  There is no particular reason why we should not send women surgeons too; the old pretence that women are too nervous, too cowardly and excitable, for dangerous duties is now quite exploded.  In fact, it is recorded that when the unspeakable German military heads sent airmen recently to bomb the hospitals a woman doctor there went on composedly with her operation, though "the instruments were dancing on the table" from the shock of the explosions.  Deeply to be deprecated as I, for one, should think it for women to be added to the ordinary source of military strength in any nation (which would mean in all), there are occasions when every effort must be put forth for our own life and for the liberty of generations to come.  And, after all, the woman who dares death in the operating tent near the front is doing nothing much more heroic than nurses in fever hospitals do constantly at home—or more even than every mother courageously encounters.