The New York Times from New York, New York • Page 48

Jle New Yort Time Magazine, October TO. tVff Woman Surgeons Experiences in War Hospital Dr. Mary M. Crawford, Just Back from Service with the American Ambulance, Tells of the Work Among the Wounded at Neuilly r.7::V;l-Jr C1 5 i 'ctV ft i i 5 i t' rf J. Dr.

Crawford and an International Tea Party I am bo glad you are a woman! was Dr. Mary M. Crawford's greetings to The Times representative. Per-hapa I can get you to understand how I shrink from being featured personally in all this talk of ray work in the American Ambulance." Dr. Crawford, who holds the distinction of being the only woman surgeon who has worked in this splendid institu tion, at Neuilly, has just returned from Paris, where she went as one of six doc tors wnose traveling expenses were.piu the Duchesse de Tallyrand.

She was appointed to her post in October last. They wanted an anaesthetist, and, as she has had much experience in giving ether, she was chosen. For three months she worked on Dr. Blake's service, and she ays that his work is just as extraordi- tv' it There are four services in the hospital Dr. Blake's, Dr.

Dubouchefs, Dr. Mignot's, and a fourth in charge of several surgeons. In January, when she bad gained a practicable smattering of French she was transferred to Dr. Mignot's service as house surgeon. She had charge of fifty patients, did their dressings, kept their' records, and assisted at numerous operations.

She was called upon at night in any emergency, such as a sudden hemorrhage or a marked change for the worse in one her eases. Her personal charges were nearly all The" work much too big? to be csed as an exploitation of one who was merely a cog in the continued Dr. Crawford. "And yet I cannot get people to understand ray feeling. They say, 'We will mention how modest and retiring you arei I am not modest 'and retiring.

I simply do not wish to be given credit for doing things that I did not dv I will gladly talk about the machine of which I was a part, but I should much rather talk of the men whom the machine was organized to help. We had all kinds of patients English in the early days after the battle tf the Marne, Turcos, Senegalese, even at the beginning a few Germans." These last, however, had to be treated as prisoners, and the care of them was too much -for the hospital authorities. It eemed hardly fair, besides, either to them or to the French and English, to mix them all up' together, and they are now sent to special hospitals. Some of our English cass were so desperately wounded that they remained with us for months. Our last Tommy left us only in August." What sort of a patient does Tommy make? asked The Times representative.

We hear, rumors that his demands for what he thinks his due are rather in- sistcnt." Tommy Atkins is a darling declared Dr. Crawford, "and he makes a splendid patient, grateful, obedient, and heroic about bearing Of course, he has not the gay charm of the French. But you don't need to tell him that; he knows It as well as you do. This exaggerated partisanship of nationality is unfair, I think, and rather stupid. It is fool'sh to make comparisons between the French and English soldier, when both are doing their very utmost.

The men themselves would never do so. The Tommies do expect a lot, and they are quite right to do so. You see, the men we had were those of the first expeditionary force, seasoned soldiers, who. had seen service in India and in Africa, and who were thoroughly accustomed to being well taken care, of by their empire. They are quite unlike the soldiers of France, who leave ordinary avocations at the summons of mobilization, and do not know what to expect.

Tommy is a professional, not a conscript or a peasant. Then we had the Turcos ITere she was interrupted. Dr, Crawford, just exactly what is a Turco she was ne is an Arab," she answered, from Tunis, Morocco, or Algiers. His name, as I understand it, has nothing to do nationality, but is a sort of shortening from tirailleur, for they are all 'We had Senegalese, too, big, black, splendid fellows from the Sudan, pure Negroid in type. The famous Moosa, the Senegal! who has become so' celebrated that he is al- 7 a bore, was in one of our wards.

Of course, he is a character. Just one degree removed from an he was a woolly headed savage when we got him. He came in with an awful leg fracture, and still limping about on canes and undergoing an operation every little while to remove another bit of dead bone. lie was a handful in the beginning. He would hit and try to bite every one who came near him, and tear off his bandages at night and pray over his wound.

He had just two words of French, Attends! which he growled at yon when you tried to do anything for him, and Champagne! for which he shrieked continually. He would bang his cup and yell for a solid hour, while his nurse went on serenely with her work, and finally give in when she ordered him to bed. We were at a loss at first to account for his expensive tastes, but we found that he had been fighting in the Champagne country, and they had been accustomed to ripping open cellars whenever they came across them, and drinking the contents. He gradually became tame, and be is now a most accomplished, polished gentleman. The first time that he was given a meal on a tray was funny.

There was butter on the plate. He inspected it, then felt it, then smelled it, and then he greased his feet with it- "A sympathizing lady invited him and his nurse to luncheon. When the nurse tried to get him to enter the elevator in the apartment house he backed away suspiciously from the cage. She pressed the button, and they began to ascend. Yi! Yi! Yi! shrieked Moosa in mad delight.

He could hardly be persuaded to get out, and would have been perfectly happy to ride up and in it all day. At table he. was so fearful of making' a faux pas that he merely pecked at his food, his usual appetite being as voracious as a wolf's. To make conversation, Madame asked if he had killed 'any Germans. 'Oh! he replied deprecatingly, it is really not worth while to ask! "The Turco can't get used to having women in the place.

Women, with him, are creatures solely of the background; but to have women, and white women at that, all about him worse than all, to have them in authority over him, to be forced to take their orders is too much for him to understand. He is childlike, however, in many ways; learns quickly, I it-. I IV 1 II I II i I- I I I I I i ri.a-iiMt1iiiiii-t mm .4 Pat McCarthy and His Arab Comrade..