Rush Call Brings Hospital Surgical Staff to Remove Cinder From Eye

"We're bringing her to the hospital now! Have the doctors ready! We'll be there in five minutes!"

When the foregoing message in an agitated woman's voice rang in her ear over the telephone, Miss Olive Johnson, night superintendent of nurses at St. Barnabas Hospital, got into action with the speed of professional system. She sensed at least a serious automobile accident.

Within the stipulated five minutes two physicians, the night surgeon, two nurses and three or four attendants stood mobilized in the operating room.

Instruments and anaesthetics were ready for instant use when the tumbril would wheel the patient from the ambulance entrance to the operating table.

Then the "patient" appeared at the hospital steps. She walked upright, held the arm of her girl companion with a healthy grip and showed no sign of mishap even in rumpled clothing or lameness. As the young woman entered the assembled physicians scanned her with wonder. Maybe the patient is to follow, they thought.

The second girl was spokeswoman.

"A cinder blew into Mazie's eye, about two blocks down the street, and we thought it best to have you ready, so I phoned at the drugstore. I tried to rub it out with my handkerchief but it just made her eye hurt worse. Mazie cried and the flow of tears wouldn't wash it away. I pulled a hair from the mane of a passing horse and tried to snake the cinder out – and then I remembered we were just a little way from Barnabas Hospital."

The physicians, surgeon, nurses and attendant soon captured the annoying cinder. The girls reached their destination at a picture theater on time. They declined to leave their names on the hospital records.

The gang's all here: In this photo taken around 1915, doctors, nurses, attendants and observers of some sort surrounded a patient in the surgical theater at St. Barnabas Hospital in Minneapolis. (Image courtesy of Metropolitan Medical Center Historical Library)