Getting Up and Running
Staffing the hospitals overseas was the first significant step, and Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton wrote an open letter calling for women physicians to join AWHS and the war effort. Published in the Woman’s Medical Journal, candidates stepped forward, signed contracts, left their practices, and put their lives on hold to serve.
Dr. Morton's open letter for volunteers.
AWHS contract, page 1.
AWHS contract, page 2.
Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
When AMWA created the War Services Committee in 1917, its president, Bertha Van Hoosen, appointed Rosalie Slaughter Morton as its first chairperson. Dr. Morton also served with the Red Cross in Europe before the United States’ entry into the war. She was decorated by several European governments including France, Russia, and Yugoslavia. Dr. Morton chronicled her life in her autobiography entitled A Woman Surgeon.
The first group of women physicians leaving for AWH service, 1918.
Dr. Charlotte Fairbanks, Chief Surgeon at Luzancy, France, circa 1918.
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