Shifted By The Winds (26 page)

Nurses moved from bed to bed with pitchers of water—and nothing else—their set faces pinched with worry and pain.

“My God,” Carrie whispered.

The nurse nodded. “I know. These poor people don’t have a chance.”

“Where are they from?” Carrie asked suddenly.

“Where are they
from
?” the nurse echoed. “Here in the city, of course.”

“What parts of Philadelphia?” It was suddenly critically important that Carrie know.

“A large number of them came from Moyamensing.” The nurse gazed out over what looked to be hundreds of beds. “Other neighborhoods have been hit, but none this hard. The city is hoping to keep it from spreading anymore.”

Carrie felt sick as she absorbed the news. She was looking at a room full of mostly Irish people in the last moments of their lives. Thoughts of Oliver Cromwell filled her mind. Her own ancestor had been vastly responsible for destroying the Irish way of life when they landed on the shores of America to live mostly in poverty. Now an epidemic running rampant in England had breached the shores of America and reached out to destroy more Irish lives. She bit back a desire to scream with frustration, but the heavy weight of responsibility settled in her gut. Surely she had discovered the truth about her ancestor for a reason. There must be something she could do to make a difference.

“Are you all right?” The nurse in charge took hold of her arm. “Ma’am? You look ill.”

Carrie stared at her, barely registering the words. “How long do they have?” She ground her teeth when the nurse stared back without comprehension. “How long do they have to live?”

“By the time we get them here, they don’t have very long. Usually a day or two at the most. Cholera takes people quickly.”

Carrie swallowed the taste of bile and forced herself to focus. “How many have died?”

The nurse shook her head. “I don’t see how that matters,” she said suddenly. “Didn’t you say you were here to help?” Her dark eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Or are you just some newspaper reporter looking for a story?”

Carrie shook her head quickly. “I promise I am not with a newspaper. And I am here to help. Please, tell me what I can do.”

The nurse shrugged. “Patients aren’t allowed visitors. You can hand out water and talk to the people who are still aware so they don’t feel so alone. That’s all anyone can do.”

Carrie fought the rage boiling inside her. This nurse was doing the best she could, and her face said she cared. “I don’t believe that,” Carrie replied, her certainty growing as she spoke. “I don’t believe that,” she repeated.

“I’m sorry?” the nurse asked in an astonished voice. “What are you talking about?”

Carrie shook her head and stepped back. “I’m sorry, but I can’t stay. I have to go somewhere.” She regretted the astonished look on the nurse’s face as she spun and walked away, but she refused to just sit beside a patient’s bed and watch them die. She must, at least, make an attempt to help.

She knew of only one way to do that.

Carrie left the stench of death and headed for 1105 Filbert Street. She was resigned to the fact that she might not help the hundreds filling the hospital in that moment, but she was determined to return with information that would help them recover from cholera—not just hold their hands and watch them die.

She walked briskly through the streets of Philadelphia, her mind working too fast to notice the changing leaves as summer bowed in submission to fall. Her schedule had kept her too busy to make an appointment to talk to anyone. And yet, there was suddenly nothing more important than finding an answer to the disease that was killing thousands of Philadelphians, seemingly most of them Irish.

Her thoughts whirled as she envisioned the repercussions of her actions, but the more she pondered it, the more she realized she simply didn’t care. The not caring, however, did not protect her from the pounding headache that assaulted her as she thought of the hordes of playing children surrounding Biddy and Faith’s home. The pounding intensified as she envisioned either of her dear friends struck down with cholera.

“Watch out, lady!”

Carrie jolted back into awareness as she felt someone shove her from the path of a carriage. “Thank you,” she muttered, but she didn’t slow her pace. Nothing was more important than getting to the Homeopathic Medical College. She pushed her way past vendors, ignoring the smell of bread and cookies wafting out from the bakeries she passed, and completely dismissing the people who stared at her as she rushed down the street in a very unladylike manner. The images of burning eyes on the verge of death pushed her forward.

She stopped just long enough to get her breath when she arrived at her destination. While she fought to control her breathing, she gazed up at the elegant four-story building towering above her. She knew the Homeopathic College had started out in the same location where she now went to school. Matthew told her they had moved to these larger quarters in 1850. As her breathing and pulse slowed, she had a brief thought as to whether she was on a fool’s mission. What if no one would see her? As soon as she had the thought, she pushed it aside and strode up the stairs. She would quite simply
make
someone see her.

That determination carried her up the stairs, but when she entered the cavernous, echoing foyer she ground to a halt again, doubts assailing her. Several people walked past, clearly on a mission, but she was hesitant to stop one of them. Carrie scolded her timidity, knowing her own mission was vitally important. She also realized the possible consequences of her actions were the true root of her fear. “Oh, for pity’s sake,” she muttered.

“Excuse me?”

Carrie spun around, unaware a woman had been standing right behind her. “Oh…” she breathed, frantically trying to force intelligent words from her mouth. As she stood there opening and closing her mouth, she realized it wasn’t just the fear of possible consequences but the sudden acceptance that she was somehow staring at her future, and she didn’t want to mess it up.

“My name is Carolyn Blakely,” the woman said.

At least Carrie could respond to that. “My name is Carrie Borden,” she replied, glad her voice didn’t carry the trembling vibrating through her body. Something about the woman with salt-and-pepper gray hair and light blue eyes soothed her. “I need to speak with someone,” she said boldly.

“About what?” Carolyn probed.

Carrie felt herself relaxing more as Carolyn’s eyes communicated calm compassion. She managed a low laugh. “I really am capable of speech. I’m just a little overwhelmed right now. It is very important I speak with someone about homeopathic treatment for cholera.”

Carolyn’s eyes softened with sympathy. “Is someone in your family ill?”

“No. I have volunteered to help at the city’s cholera hospital,” Carrie explained. “The conditions there are deplorable. They are simply letting people die. I must help them.”

Carolyn’s eyes widened. “I see…”

Carrie laughed. Now that she had communicated her mission, she simply had to press through until she got what she came for. “I realize this may be a little unorthodox.”

Carolyn continued to gaze at her for another moment. “You are a nurse?”

“I’m a student at the Female Medical College.”

Carolyn’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, this is rather unorthodox.” There was no judgment in her voice, only a slight bewilderment.

Carrie laughed again. “I would love to explain. Can you tell me who I need to talk with? I’m afraid I don’t have much time. There are too many people who need help.”

Carolyn’s face indicated she had many questions, but she nodded quickly. “I believe Dr. Strikener is in his office.”

“Dr. Lucas Strikener?”

“You know him?”

“Is he the same doctor who inspected the hospitals in Richmond just after the war to make sure they met Union standards?” Carrie’s thoughts were whirling again. She’d had no indication Dr. Strikener was anything but a regular doctor. Surely…

“He’s the same man,” Carolyn responded. “Though he has changed quite a bit.”

Carrie opened her mouth to ask her own questions, but a voice ringing across the foyer stopped her.

“Carrie Borden?”

Carrie spun around, a smile spreading across her face. “Dr. Strikener!”

Dr. Lucas Strikener crossed to her with a welcoming smile on his face. “I thought that was you. What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same thing,” Carrie responded, “but the short answer is that, evidently, I am here to speak to you.”

“She wants to talk about homeopathic cures for cholera,” Carolyn inserted. “She is a student at the Female Medical College.”

Dr. Strikener raised his eyebrows. “Are you now?” He waved his hand toward a closed door on the other side of the foyer. “I was just on the way to my office. Please join me. We’ll answer each other’s questions.”

Carolyn stepped forward. “May I join you, as well?” she asked hesitantly.

Dr. Strikener laughed. “I’m sure you recognize a good story when you see one,” he said easily. He glanced at Carrie.

“I’d love for you to join us, Carolyn,” Carrie said quickly. She already sensed this woman would become an ally and friend, and she’d rather not explain her story twice.

As they crossed the lobby, she tingled with both excitement and nervousness. Without words to explain, she was quite sure she was casting herself out into a turbulent ocean. Once again, the winds of change were about to shift everything in her world.
 

Dr. Strikener pulled off his suit jacket and hung it from a hook before he settled down in the leather chair behind his ornate desk.

Carrie gazed around his office, glad it communicated the same warmth she saw radiating from the doctor’s light brown eyes. He was every bit as handsome as she remembered, but his hair was much grayer than when she had known him right after the war. Only a year and a half had passed. She wondered what had happened to age him so quickly. She had watched her father go gray far earlier than he should have because of wartime stresses and tragedy.

Dr. Strikener smiled as she inspected him. “You’re wondering why I have aged so much.”

Carrie flushed, embarrassed he had read her thoughts, and wishing anew her face didn’t reveal everything going on in her mind. She searched for a response. “I…”

The doctor’s smile widened into a cheerful grin. “Without knowing what you are here to talk about, I am going to hazard a guess it is the same reason I have gone gray so quickly.”

Carrie stared at him, completely at a loss for words. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Dr. Strikener threw back his head in a loud laugh, and then waved both her and Carolyn into the comfortable chairs across from his desk. “Carolyn, Carrie Borden is a very unique young woman. She is the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner from the Richmond area. Her father served in the Confederate government, while Carrie served as a doctor for the Confederate Army at Chimborazo Hospital. She kept the hospital supplied with herbal medicines when the blockade kept anything else from coming through, and she also began, and ran, the only hospital for black patients.”

Carolyn’s mouth was the one to hang open now. Finally she murmured, “I see…” She turned to Carrie with wide eyes. “And now you’re a medical student?”

“I am,” Carrie said. She could fill in all the gaps for Carolyn at a later time. “An unhappy one, I’m afraid.”

“Because you don’t agree with the methods being taught and used by the regular medical profession?” Dr. Strikener asked shrewdly.

Carrie swung back around to gaze at him. “Yes. Am I safe in assuming you are here because you found yourself in the same predicament?”

“You are. It had bothered me before the war started, but then every moment was consumed with taking care of our men wounded in battle. I treated them somewhat differently from my colleagues, but I was still feeling my way forward. All I knew was that I could no longer, in good conscience, treat my patients the way I had before. I was quite sure that in many instances I was doing more harm than good.”

Carrie remained quiet, hungry to hear every word he had to say.

“Shortly after I saw you in Richmond,” he continued, “one of my daughters was taken gravely ill. I was sure I would lose her the same way I lost my wife. I did everything I knew to do, but she didn’t get better.”

“And that’s when your hair went gray,” Carrie murmured.

“Yes,” Dr. Strikener confirmed. “Another of my daughters, influenced by Elizabeth Stanton, convinced me to consult with a homeopathic physician. My daughter recovered completely and is now a student here.”

Carrie’s eyes widened at the mention of the leader of the women’s rights movement, whom she had met in New York, but she didn’t interrupt.

“Mrs. Stanton has been a leading force in the homeopathic movement. Women in general have had a huge influence because they have been given a way to keep their families healthy, and they want to share their knowledge. As the women’s movement has grown, their voices have grown louder in their demands for more effective medicine.”

Carrie leaned forward eagerly. “And is it? More effective, I mean? Homeopathy?”

Dr. Strikener glanced at Carolyn.

“You’ve come to the right place, Carrie,” Carolyn assured her. “I was a nurse all during the war. The rates of death and suffering caused by our medical methods sickened me.” She paused. “Do you know Louisa May Alcott?”

Carrie nodded, wondering what this had to do with her question, but willing to see where the conversation went. “I don’t know her personally, but I have heard much about her. My stepmother has talked about her being a leader in both the abolitionist and women’s rights movements. If I’m correct, I also believe I have read some of her writing—a collection of her letters home from when she served as a nurse for a short time during the war.” She crinkled her brow as she remembered. “I believe she wrote about the mismanagement of hospitals and the indifference and callousness of some of the surgeons she encountered. I recall them being a combination of astute observation and humor,” she added with a smile. “I also completely agreed with her.”

Carolyn nodded, a smile lighting her eyes. “That would be my friend, Louisa. What you may not know is that Louisa became very ill with typhoid when she was serving in the hospital during the war.”

“I do remember hearing that,” Carrie answered. “I also heard she recovered.”

Carolyn’s smile morphed into a scowl. “No thanks to her doctors,” she said grimly. “They almost killed her.”

Carrie gasped but waited for her to continue her story.

“Doctors are quite impressed with their use of mercury to treat diseases like typhoid fever and syphilis,” Carolyn said, disgust dripping from her voice. “They refuse to acknowledge they are doing little but poisoning their patients. When the poisoning symptoms appear, they just blame it on the worsening of the disease they are treating.”

Carrie listened closely. “I’ve read some things that question the use of mercury.”

“Not books you have gotten from your professors,” Carolyn replied confidently.

“No,” Carrie agreed. “I do quite a bit of reading outside the curriculum. Please finish with your story about Louisa May Alcott.”

“Her doctors treated her with mercury. A homeopathic doctor stepped in, saved her life, and is still treating her for the long-term consequences of mercury poisoning. I suspect she will always have health issues, but she is well enough to do the thing she loves best—write.”

“How did the homeopathic doctor save her?” Carrie pressed. She desperately wanted to believe the things she was hearing, but they had to give her enough reasons.

Dr. Strikener stepped in. “Homeopathy is a very complete way of treating a patient, Carrie. We could talk for hours, but I know you came here for a specific reason. Let me just say that Homeopathy is an intelligent form of medicine that treats each patient as an individual. It focuses not only on the physical aspects of a disease, but also the mental and emotional. We believe each illness identifies itself through the symptoms it causes. Modern medicine tries to erase the symptoms, but we believe we can use them to determine which homeopathic remedy best suits the patient.”
Carrie nodded. “I’ve done enough reading to understand that,” she responded, “but what remedy was used for Louisa May Alcott?” She thought she had an adequate understanding of principles. It was time for specifics.

“Natrum muriaticum,” Dr. Strikener answered.

Carrie blinked. She had no clue what he was talking about, but she wasn’t here to understand mercury poisoning. “And what about a cholera remedy?”

“Cholera?” Dr. Strikener asked with a raised brow.

“Carrie is here because she has volunteered to help at the cholera hospital established by the city,” Carolyn told him.

“The Cholera Death Trap?” Dr. Strikener asked grimly.

“It’s terrible,” Carrie cried. “They are simply bringing people in to die!” Unable to control her flood of emotions, she stood and walked to the window. She took several deep breaths before she spun back around. “Is there a way to help them? Please, tell me there is.”

Dr. Strikener stared at her. “In the hospital? I’m quite certain they won’t let you try anything I might tell you.”

“But…”

Dr. Strikener held up his hand. “There is a wide rift between allopaths and homeopaths,” he said bluntly. “The regular medical profession is determined to make us be seen as little more than quacks. When my daughter was completely healed, and when I had to face the truth that my wife would have probably lived if she had been treated correctly, I dug deeply into homeopathy. I couldn’t deny the results I had seen, and what I learned told me I would continue to do great harm if I didn’t change my methods. That is when I made the shift. My practice is now one hundred percent homeopathic, and I have just recently been asked to serve on the faculty of the hospital.”

Carrie felt surer than ever that she was in the right place, but she had more questions before she returned to the cholera situation. “Are homeopathy and herbal medicine basically the same thing? Is that what Sarah taught me?”

“No,” Dr. Strikener answered. “You’ll learn the difference on a much deeper level if you decide to come to school here, but the simple answer is that herbs nourish a certain part of the body. Homeopathy works by stimulating your immune system.”

Carrie considered his response, as well as all she had learned from her reading. “A plant like milk thistle is used to treat the liver. Homeopathy is more like a vaccine for the entire body that treats a particular illness,” she finally said.

“Yes,” Carolyn agreed. “The basic principle is that ‘like supports like.’ Our remedies are like a weakened or killed disease similar to what the patient already has. The remedy primes the person’s immune response so the body is prepared to deal with the real thing.”

Carrie listened closely to learn all she could, but the vision of hundreds of dying faces from the hospital crowded into her thoughts. She knew Dr. Strikener might be correct that she couldn’t help the ones dying in the rows of beds, but another thought had come to her. “And cholera? Is there a remedy? I read that homeopathy had a tremendous result in Europe during the last epidemic. Surely—”

“Stop, Carrie,” Dr. Strikener said abruptly. He stood and walked around his desk to where she was standing. His voice was firm, but his eyes were soft with compassion. “Are you aware you may lose your place at the Female Medical College if you pursue this?”

Carrie had faced that reality when she had walked to the Homeopathic College. She met his eyes squarely. “Yes,” she replied. “I have learned a lot, and I will always be grateful for the surgical experience I received during the war, but I didn’t decide to become a doctor because I wanted to be a surgeon. I chose to be a doctor so I can make people well. I’ve seen herbal medicine do that, but I realize homeopathic medicine has gone even further in understanding the true nature of illness and how to treat it. I want to be a part of it.” She paused but didn’t look away. “I’m prepared to leave the Female Medical College and apply here. But first I want to help the people of Moyamensing.”

Dr. Strikener nodded slowly. “I understand cholera has hit them especially hard.”

“Most of the people dying in the hospital are from Moyamensing,” Carrie said sharply. There wasn’t time to tell the story of Oliver Cromwell. “I have good friends down there. Is there a way for me to help them?”

Dr. Strikener held her gaze. His eyes revealed his awareness that there was more to the story than she was telling, but he didn’t press further. He turned toward the bulging bookcases lining three sides of his office, hesitated, and then reached for a very thin leather-bound volume. He handed it to her without a word.

Carrie’s eyes widened when she saw the title. Cholera, Homeopathic Treatment.. She took a slow breath, feasting her eyes on the rich leather. “And it works?” she breathed.

“It works,” Dr. Strikener confirmed.

Carrie stared at the book and went rigid with anger. “Then why is it not being used?” Her head pounded as she thought of the hopeless stares of the hundreds dying in the hospital. “Because of pride? Because of money? This is criminal!”

“I would agree,” Dr. Strikener said crisply, “but I suspect you don’t have time to hear my feelings on that very issue. We’ll have plenty of time to talk in the future.”

Carrie held the book closely. “Where do I get the remedy?”

“There is a dispensary just down the street,” Carolyn answered. She hesitated. “May I help you? I have some experience with this.”

Carrie turned to her eagerly. “Of course! I have no problem admitting when I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.” She managed a small smile before she glanced out the window and realized the afternoon light was ebbing away. “I’m afraid it’s too late to go down today. I will hire a carriage and pick you up early tomorrow morning. Say eight o’clock?”