Anastasia, Florence Nightingale, and I: A Nurse's Story

The inspiration of a group of Harvard Medical School undergraduates was the beginning of what was to become The Harvard Medical School of China in Shanghai. All, it seems, had received invitations form physicians practicing in China to locate a school of modern medicine there and were eager to join the venture. After many setbacks, in the course of time the school would occupy a large, handsome, two story structure generously offered by the Chinese Red Cross. It provided operating rooms, wards for twenty patients, lecture halls, laboratories, and administration suite, and a student dormitory.
Though, by design the Harvard Medical Schools of China was limited to five years, from 1911 to 1916, it did in fact play a not inconsequential role in the introduction of modern medicine to ancient China.
It was shortly after this new school opened its doors that my mother passed through them for her first interview with Dr. Carl Hedblom, the note thoracic surgeon, for whom she was to work as surgical nurse, and whom she idolized. It was the interview that was to change the course of her life. Arriving myself sometime not long after that, I did my best to notice how it was going, which I relate in this book.