He came from good stock .... this is his mother !! DOROTHEA CLARA MAUDE (1879-1959) Dorothea Maude was born, the middle of five girls of an Anglo/Irish family, in 1879 in Newbury, south of Oxford, England. One of the pivotal events in her life was that her mother died when she was ten years old. She and her sisters were raised by their father, an equerry to the King, and a series of governesses. After completing her schooling at Cheltenham Ladies College, in 1897 Maude went up to Oxford's Somerville College to read science. Although she graduated first in her class, the only woman, she was not awarded her degree. Like many of her male classmates, Maude then went on to study medicine. She went down to London's Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women (1) for her training. She also earned a Master's degree at Trinity College, Dublin before returning to the U.K. for a series of locum positions and, finally, establishing her practice in Oxford's city centre. She was the first in her family to study medicine. Maude first travelled to Antwerp to join a Belgian Field Hospital in the autumn of 1914. When the front shifted she went in January 1915, as the only female physician, to join a Royal Army Medical Corps unit in France and then, with her uncle Alwyne Maude, to set up the first Maude Hospital for battle casualties in a converted amusement hall in Dunkirk. She left the Maude hospital that spring to return to England. SERBIA, JULY 1915 On 6 July 1915, Maude made her third expedition of the war, this time travelling to Serbia. She offered her services to the Serbian Relief group and was recruited into No 5 unit of the Second British Farmers' Ambulance unit as Anaesthetist/Asst. Surgeon. Her destination was a small town in northern Serbia, Pozarevac, where another woman physician, Dr Milne Henry, was posted with her doctor husband. To prepare, Maude and those travelling with her spent the journey reading up on diseases new to her and rampant in Serbia, including typhus, smallpox, malaria, and relapsing fever, and other potential dangers such as plague and cholera, and inoculating each other. The Serbian offensive, which was the reason for Maude being sent to northern Serbia, had been delayed because of the Russian retreat. In fact, most of her work in and around Pozarevac would be checking disease instead of treating battle casualties. The field hospital staff included: four doctors, sixteen nurses, women orderlies including a yound Canadian woman engineer, Josephine Whitehead, who would become Maude's best friend in Serbia, three "very good lady cooks" and "several other useless encumbrances". One of the challenges faced by Maude and her British colleagues were based in the cultural differences, particularly as they impacted on the declining health of the population. For example, in her diary, Maude wrote: "These people are full of superstition. One of our nurses paid some attention to a pretty child in the village. That night it had a pain in its tummy. The mother was certain the nurse had used the 'evil eye' and came up to the hospital to demand redress. She required some of the nurse's spittle to apply to the child's face. The nurse, being modern trained, was scandalised at such treatment and refused it. Fortunately, the pain departed of itself." As word of the new fully staffed medical facility reached further afield, the hospital grew. Maude wrote how,"The outpatients department flourishes exceedingly and is now the largest. The patients are very grateful and bring large maize cakes to show their thanks. There are no Serb doctors, except those in the hospital for miles round, most having been killed off." An excellent horsewoman, Maude divided her time between outpatients in Pozarevac and riding out three miles to another camp hospital to administer anaesthetics. In September 1915, Maude left for Belgrade, to accompany nurses sick with typhoid, back to Britain. There had been some concern, with the political situation in Serbia becoming more heated, that unless she and the nurses left Serbia quickly, they might be trapped by an Austro-Hungarian offensive. While the nurses regained enough strength to travel, Maude spent three weeks working in fever wards in Belgrade. At the same time she also wrote a pamphlet on tuberculosis, in which she advocated fresh air; this pamphlet was translated into and published in Serbian. On 4 October 1915, Maude and the nurses departed for the UK on the Yarra, via Salonika, Athens, Malta, Marseilles and Paris, arriving in Folkestone, England on 27 October 1915. RETURNING TO SERVE SERBIANS IN EXILE In accompanying the sick nurses back to England, Maude missed the great Serbian army retreat over the mountains to Albania and the coast. The Serbs who survived the retreat were evacuated to Corfu, which was under French military rule. By early 1916, there were 64,000 sick and wounded in Corfu, and exiled Serbs were dying at the rate of one hundred each day, mostly from starvation and illness. Maude's hospital unit in Pozarevac had been captured by the Austrians and Maude had returned to her practice in Oxford. She writes: "Everyone who ever worked for the Serbs became devoted to them. I was no exception and I was aching to return to their succour. Uncle Alwyne was aching to do the same thing and he persuaded a body named the Wounded Allies that he was just the man for the job of starting and running a hospital for them in Corfu. For starting it he certainly was: for running it, not so good. Anyway it was my only chance and I again joined up with him ..." So Maude made her fourth crossing of the English Channel to journey to Europe, via Paris, Genoa and Rome arriving in Brindisi in mid-March. After being waylaid for a week by military beaurecracy, Maude joined her uncle on Corfu. Alwyne Maude had decided to locate the Second Maude Hospital on the grounds of the Villa San Stefano, high above sea level, twelve miles from Corfu town. He had stables and cowsheds converted into medical wards and had two large barraquements constructed as well as set up marquees for fever patients. Exiled Serbs continued to struggle to survive. As Maude writes, "Everyday now transports take away Serbs to Salonika. They are personally conducted by torpedo destroyer boats, but they expect to lose fully ten percent by submarines on route. ... Poor broken men, ... looking twice their age, worn to the bone. The French are cleaning them out of their hospital fast now, having no use for men who will never again make soldiers. ... Some of my Serbs are dying because they do not wish any more to live. ... Many are quite incurable and must slowly die if inanition because they can never digest the simplest food. An overdose of morphia would be the kindest treatment for them and the many, many hopeless [tuberculose] ones. ... How many poor Serbs will be left to inhabit Serbia?" On the bright side for Maude, she was reunited in Corfu with many of her friends from Pozarevac, including her young Canadian confidante, Josephine Whitehead. SALONIKA The next phase of Maude's time abroad began on 14 September 1916 when the Maude Hospital was transferred to Salonika. Salonika, Maude writes, now had Russians, Italians and Portuguese and was more cosmopolitan than ever. Unfortunately, it was also a "plague ridden haunt" full of malaria and dysentery with forty percent of those in the town sick with one or the other or both diseases. Despite remaining largely healthy during her time in Serbia and Corfu, Maude fell ill of malaria within two weeks of arriving in Salonika. She recovered, post-quinine treatment, after ten days. Maude writes how the exiled Serb troops now number 120,000 with forty to fifty percent out of action due to disease or malnutrition. Morale was poor - the Serbs were bitter about lack of Allied support. As Maude writes, the Serbs felt they were left to do all the fighting, suffer all the losses and pay for everything the French did - the French saw Serbs as "food for cannon". She cites the case of the 18th Regiment, Danube Division which numbered 16,000 strong in October 1916; by January 1917 their ranks had been reduced to just three hundred. Her diaries also document the successful wooing by Lt. Hugh Nasmyth and the "sad downfall of Major Beaune", another potential British suitor, both with the ASC. In mid-October 1916, Maude was told to leave the Villa and open a hospital 60 miles north of Salonika in Vodena. This new hospital, which would be Maude's last, was in a large house, filled with lice and bugs - it had previously been used as a typhus hospital. Maude's diaries are filled with references available facilities, conditions, and personal reminiscences of specific cases such as: "A poor old man, a walking skeleton, has come to hospital with a fat little boy of five, his grandson. They have escaped ... come through the lines and often live for days in cellars but this old man has cared for the little chap well. He is as fat as butter. The old man will die of TB from his privations, but he seems content to go, having accomplished his end, and trusts us implicitly to look after the child. It is pathetic to see the faces of the men in the wards who have children of their own in Serbia when they see this baby. They just gloat over him." In early April 1917, Maude arranged for her wedding to Nasmyth. They were married on 19 April 1917 and enjoyed a ten-day honeymoon in Mikra. She also said goodbye to Whitehead who returned to Canada. The women would never see each other again. Maude had developed a deep and abiding affection for the Serbian people. In her diary, preparing to depart for Britain, she wrote: "Leave Vodena with many, many regrets for the dear Serbs whom I can never forget. H.N. [Hugh Nasmyth] came for me. All the possible patients and all the Serb soldiers whom we had brought from Corfu were lined up to say goodbye. Shook hands with all latter, who saluted and shouted 'Spogum' (goodbye) in unison. It was a dreadful moment." On 30 April 1917, Maude sailed for the UK while Nasmyth was sent off to Bonitsa. Maude would never return to Serbia. She returned to England on 13 May 1917. She bore two children, resumed her practice and died at age 80, not far from Oxford in 1959. The final word on Dr Maude is reserved for her uncle, Alwyne Maude, with whom she worked in France, Belgium and on Corfu: "She is a very small lady, with an extremely girlish silhouette; and when I presented her to the medical potentates as my principal doctor, I often caught a smile of incredulity on their faces. But later on when they had worked with her they were full of respect and admiration. ... For me and for the patients she was an unmixed blessing." ISHM 2006 - Scientific Program
