Freshly starched and newly capped: Class of 1941 graduate Photo: duke medical center archives

ursing was more regimented back then," says Mary Jane White Raulston B.S.N. '43, reminiscing about her nursing school days at Duke. "We had to be at chapel at 7:00 every morning. And you couldn't get married while you were in nursing school. The hospital didn't have a housekeeping department then, so we had to remake the rooms ourselves."

That's not all the hospital didn't have during the war years. "There was a big Army unit formed in my senior year," Raulston says, "and the operating-room people and doctors and nurses went away, so they graduated us three months early. Suddenly, my friend and I were made head nurses at Mr. Duke's hospital--that's what we all called it back then, staff and patients. I remember we were paid $87.50 a month, with full room and board and laundry."

The laundry was no small matter because those were the days of starched uniforms. "During our probation period--we called them our 'probie days'--we wore blue uniforms and organdy bows and aprons with no upper bibs. We had our capping ceremony at nine months and wore starched white disposable cuffs."

" Once we got our caps, we wouldn't have dared go on duty without them," recalls Eileen Blaylock R.N. '47. "I always prided myself on my starched outfits and white shoes and stockings. Of course, we couldn't wear white uniforms 'til we graduated.

" We tended the fire when everybody else went off to war. I didn't realize what pressure that was. We just thought that was normal back then. We should have been more frightened. They made us cadet nurses and paid us a small amount to keep us in reserve in case the war went on. We really got the bedside experience!"

And lots of other experience as well. "There were no disposable needles then, so we spent our down time sharpening and re-sterilizing needles. We had to make our own solutions. For morphine, we had to crush tablets in a spoon and heat it. I've seen a lot of change."

Raulston returned to her native Texas after nursing school at Duke. "When I first came back to Houston, penicillin had just come in, and it hurt so badly, we had to use ice bags on patients. I remember my first meningitis patient who got well with streptomycin. And being in Houston, I saw all the heart developments with Dr. DeBakey. Research really blossomed after the war."

" I really have always been so glad I went into nursing and got such a good background at Duke," says Raulston, who retired in 1986 after being a teacher and supervisor and a director of nursing at a hospital for twenty years; she was a consultant until last year. "But I wouldn't be able to survive a minute now with all the new gadgets." "I'd be lost now," agrees Blaylock. "I'd be low man now." Actually, chances are, both would rise to the occasion and take charge just as they did back then.

--Miriam Sauls