Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Mary Breckenrich was born February seventeenth, eighteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: so we are bringing out our episode on her as
Speaker 1: Today's Saturday Classic, So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Missed
Speaker 1: in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy you Wilson.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to talk about the topic that
Speaker 1: a lot of people have requested, the one that I
Speaker 1: have noted as the most recent requester. So our listener, Amy,
Speaker 1: I'm a little worried. I'm going to confess because we've
Speaker 1: talked before in the show about pioneers who advanced the
Speaker 1: medical field, specifically as it relates to infants. They're usually
Speaker 1: super uplifting and really great stories. Today's subject definitely adds
Speaker 1: to that medical improvement for the health of children, but
Speaker 1: it also has some problemic elements, and I don't know
Speaker 1: that people who have requested it necessarily know those problematic parts,
Speaker 1: and they may be disappointed to discover them. I have
Speaker 1: several things that are on not the specific topic that
Speaker 1: we're about to talk about, but several things on my
Speaker 1: episode suggestion list that I know that people who have
Speaker 1: asked for it are expecting like a one hundred percent affirming,
Speaker 1: uplifting story, but there's like a bad side to it that. Yeah. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was describing this story to my husband in the
Speaker 1: car this morning, as I often do, sort of as
Speaker 1: a way to make sure I've got bases covered and
Speaker 1: you know, all the logic flows, and he said, I
Speaker 1: feel like history is full of this one m Night
Speaker 1: Shyamalan plot twist where people seem amazing and then they
Speaker 1: turn out to have like this horrible thing about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: usually racism. I was like, Yeah, a really good way
Speaker 1: to put it, especially this particular time period. Yes, so
Speaker 1: we're talking about Mary Breckinridge. She is known as the
Speaker 1: founder of American nurse midwiffery, and she's an iconic figure
Speaker 1: in Kentucky. But as we have just alluded to their
Speaker 1: problematic parts of her ideology, here's some udenis we're going
Speaker 1: to get to you. Yep. So we're gonna talk first
Speaker 1: about sort of her life and what led her to
Speaker 1: do this, and then at the end we'll discuss these
Speaker 1: problematic elements. Yeah, so let's hit it. Mary Breckinridge was
Speaker 1: born in Memphis, Tennessee on February seventeenth, eighteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: Her father, Clifton Rhodes Breckinridge, was a congressman from Arkansas,
Speaker 1: so she spent a lot of her childhood in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Yeah, he's an interesting figure too. There's like
Speaker 1: a whole scandal, a voting scandal related to his political career,
Speaker 1: but maybe for another episode. After Washington, the Breckenridges moved
Speaker 1: eventually across the globe to Saint Petersburg, Russia, when her
Speaker 1: father was appointed US Minister to Russia. And Mary's education,
Speaker 1: as you may guess from this life of being in
Speaker 1: a pretty prominent family, was one of privilege. She attended
Speaker 1: private schools in the US in Stanford, Connecticut and at
Speaker 1: the Lausanne, Switzerland, and she had private tutors in Russia
Speaker 1: as well. Basically everywhere they went she had the best
Speaker 1: possible education. At the age of eighteen, Mary moved to Arkansas,
Speaker 1: where she lived until her marriage to Henry Ruffner Morrison,
Speaker 1: who was a lawyer. In nineteen oh four. Mary was
Speaker 1: widowed after just two years with her husband when Morrison
Speaker 1: died because of acute appendicitis. Still sort of dealing with
Speaker 1: this loss Breckinridge enrolled in school again, this time in
Speaker 1: New York City at a nursing school at Saint Luke's Hospital.
Speaker 1: She graduated and became a registered nurse. In nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: six years after the death of her first husband, Mary
Speaker 1: got married a second time, this time to the president
Speaker 1: of a woman's school in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Richard Ryan Thompson.
Speaker 1: Mary started to work at the school as a teacher.
Speaker 1: Her international education lent itself to teaching language, specifically French,
Speaker 1: and she also taught classes on hygiene. In nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: Mary and Richard had a son, Clifton brick and Ridge Thompson,
Speaker 1: who they nicknamed Brecky. Two years later, in nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: they had a second child, this time a daughter named Polly,
Speaker 1: and they were very excited about it, but their joy
Speaker 1: was abruptly cut short when she died just six hours
Speaker 1: after her birth. Mary wrote of this loss quote aggrieved
Speaker 1: for the life she had missed, the splendid work she
Speaker 1: might have done, the human motherhood she might not know.
Speaker 1: Two years later, four year old Brecky also died just
Speaker 1: days after his birthday. He got sick. He underwent surgery
Speaker 1: to address what doctors thought was an intestinal blockage. It
Speaker 1: became immediately clear that he had a serious abdominal infection,
Speaker 1: and he never recovered. This death not only struck her
Speaker 1: to the core as a grieving parent, but it also
Speaker 1: really made Mary fear for her work and how it
Speaker 1: would be perceived by the public. She had been writing
Speaker 1: for several years about how to raise healthy children, and
Speaker 1: she had, in the course of two years, lost both
Speaker 1: of her her own. She was worried that people would
Speaker 1: think that that meant she didn't know what she was
Speaker 1: talking about. Throughout the rest of her life, she believed
Speaker 1: that Becky was ever present in a spiritual sense and
Speaker 1: that she could communicate with him on the other side.
Speaker 1: The strain of losing two children also took a toll
Speaker 1: on her marriage. Mary experienced bouts of depression which continued
Speaker 1: through her life, and her husband, Richard, was not faithful.
Speaker 1: Mary left Richard in nineteen eighteen while World War One
Speaker 1: was still playing out, and she applied to work with
Speaker 1: the American Red Cross as a nurse in Europe, but
Speaker 1: she had to wait for an assignment. In case you
Speaker 1: are ever looking at information about her life, we didn't
Speaker 1: go into it. They will often list her divorce as
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, which is when the divorce papers actually happened,
Speaker 1: but they had been apart for two years by that point.
Speaker 1: This reason for her delay, though in joining the Red Cross,
Speaker 1: was due to the rule that no one with a
Speaker 1: brother actively serving in the military could be sent to
Speaker 1: areas where the war was taking place. This was in
Speaker 1: order to preserve the family in the likelihood that the
Speaker 1: place that the brother was stationed got bombed or rated
Speaker 1: or attacked in some way, and like a family would
Speaker 1: not lose multiple children at once. Since Mary had a
Speaker 1: brother serving at the time, but really felt strongly that
Speaker 1: she could make an impact on the children of Europe
Speaker 1: who needed assistance, she and her mother went to visit
Speaker 1: the head of the American Red Cross Nursing Service, Jane Delano,
Speaker 1: and sort of plead her case to get around the rule.
Speaker 1: Delano agreed that Mary would be an asset, but she
Speaker 1: still couldn't send her because of the brother rule. While
Speaker 1: Delano worked on Mary's behalf, Breckinridge took on a three
Speaker 1: month assignment, traveling through the country collecting data on the
Speaker 1: state of children's health and giving speeches. Yeah, and just
Speaker 1: to be clear of that country is the US. She
Speaker 1: went far west and visited a variety of places, and
Speaker 1: when Mary was finally clear to join the Red Cross
Speaker 1: Children's Bureau in France, she first went to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: To make arrangements and fill out the necessary paperwork. But
Speaker 1: this actually ended up being quite a detour. So this
Speaker 1: was happening, you'll recall in nineteen eighteen, and Washington, d C,
Speaker 1: like many other places, was hit really hard by the
Speaker 1: influenza epidemic, which we have talked about on the show before.
Speaker 1: As a nurse, Mary was desperately needed, so she volunteered
Speaker 1: to help. Almost immediately after seeing how badly overtaxed the
Speaker 1: medical services in the area were, and after she first
Speaker 1: asked Jane Delano if she could delay her trip to
Speaker 1: France a little while longer, this volunteer job almost immediately
Speaker 1: became more than Mary had anticipated. She later wrote in
Speaker 1: her autobiography quote, the head nurse of my area fell
Speaker 1: ill soon after I reported for duty, so that I
Speaker 1: was plunged into the direction of nursing care for thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of stricken people. I don't recall how many
Speaker 1: patients we had in my district at the peak of
Speaker 1: the epidemic, but it could not have been less than
Speaker 1: forty thousand. Nor do I remember how many nurses I
Speaker 1: had to help me, but I don't think there were
Speaker 1: more than five. We used hundreds of aids for the
Speaker 1: day and nightcare of the patients with pneumonia and the
Speaker 1: families where everybody had come down with influenza. Many of
Speaker 1: these aids were clerks turned over to us for the
Speaker 1: emergency by the government bureaus, and only a few of
Speaker 1: them had received training and home care of the sick.
Speaker 1: To compound matters, this situation was so chaotic as medical
Speaker 1: personnel and people who had sort of been requisitioned into
Speaker 1: being medical personnel to keep up with the ever growing
Speaker 1: roster of patients, that records were a little bit haphazard,
Speaker 1: she notes in her autobiography, like some of the reasons
Speaker 1: clerks tended to write things about the decease that had
Speaker 1: more to do with their area of knowledge than actually
Speaker 1: were really relevant to the illness. Like one person worked
Speaker 1: for the government and they talked about how one of
Speaker 1: the deceased patients had been sacking away sugar, like she
Speaker 1: had been kind of hoarding sugar, And it was like
Speaker 1: this isn't relevant to her medical information at all. Why
Speaker 1: are you putting this? But it was just the mindset
Speaker 1: of his or her I don't know the gender. The
Speaker 1: previous job made them think of things in those terms.
Speaker 1: Bed Bugs were also a really bad problem in the
Speaker 1: area that year, so nurses were fighting both influenza and
Speaker 1: infestation of their patients' homes. When the influenza epidemic had passed,
Speaker 1: Mary went back to preparing to join the Red Cross,
Speaker 1: but her passport and loyalty papers had a longer processing
Speaker 1: time than she'd anticipated. Unwilling to just wait, she filled
Speaker 1: the time with the Boston Instructive District Nursing Association, where
Speaker 1: she furthered her education after an abbreviated version of the
Speaker 1: association association's training courses. She worked in underprivileged neighborhoods and
Speaker 1: tenements in Boston. She later said of the experience, quote,
Speaker 1: I was to be grateful a thousand times over after
Speaker 1: I got to France of all that I learned in Boston.
Speaker 1: By the time she had her passport, it was after
Speaker 1: November eleventh, nineteen eighteen, and the war was over, but
Speaker 1: she still felt compelled to go, and so she made
Speaker 1: arrangements to be released from her obligation to the Red Cross,
Speaker 1: which was no longer sending medical personnel to France, and
Speaker 1: then she did travel to France to work with the
Speaker 1: American Committee for Devastated France. That was an organization founded
Speaker 1: by JP Morgan's daughter, Anne Morgan, in which Mary deeply loved,
Speaker 1: second only to the one that she would later found herself.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about Mary's work in France, but
Speaker 1: first we will pause for a little sponsor break. The
Speaker 1: loss of her children had really been Breckinridge's inspiration to
Speaker 1: doggedly pursue work in children's health, and she never lost
Speaker 1: that sense of calling. She had been interested in children's
Speaker 1: health before then, but she really became hyper focused on
Speaker 1: it after that, and she had been able to focus
Speaker 1: some of her public health work in Boston and Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. On the needs of children, and she obviously
Speaker 1: was working in that area as she toured the country
Speaker 1: for her reporting assignment with the Children's Bureau. She then
Speaker 1: carried that focus and passion for the care of children
Speaker 1: to Europe as well. In her work with the ACDF,
Speaker 1: she started a program that focused on the needs of
Speaker 1: pregnant women children and nursing mothers, providing both medical care
Speaker 1: and vitally needed nutrition. Even though the war was over,
Speaker 1: there were still heavy restrictions on where she could travel,
Speaker 1: so she had to once again wait for a military
Speaker 1: permit to travel into the war zone. Once she finally
Speaker 1: was approved, she saw immediately that the people of France
Speaker 1: needed all the basics clothing, bedding, and above all food.
Speaker 1: She wrote quote in the parts of France occupied by
Speaker 1: the Germans, it was not a question of the people
Speaker 1: returning to their shattered homes, because they were already there
Speaker 1: when the Germans withdrew. But all around them the ground,
Speaker 1: the bridges, the roads were destroyed so that it was
Speaker 1: almost impossible to get supplies to them. In some villages
Speaker 1: in the Nord, people had to be fed by airplane.
Speaker 1: With such widespread destruction, the problem of transport assumed gigantic proportions.
Speaker 1: One of the vital parts of rebuilding the country that
Speaker 1: Mary was directly involved in was acquiring wheat seeds so
Speaker 1: that rural areas would be able to plant crops. She
Speaker 1: personally delivered the requests for wheat and as the women
Speaker 1: chauffeurs in their organization were the only ones who were
Speaker 1: managing regular transport in the area. They delivered all of
Speaker 1: the wheat seed that ended up in the ground for
Speaker 1: that following spring. Even so, getting crops back up and
Speaker 1: running was actually quite dangerous because the fields were filled
Speaker 1: with buried explosives, and farmers who accidentally hit them while
Speaker 1: digging often died or required really extensive medical treatment. The
Speaker 1: ACDF also helped people re establish their households. In addition
Speaker 1: to seeing that they got seeds to plant, crops and
Speaker 1: medical treatment, they also assisted by helping them get low
Speaker 1: or no cost furnishings and providing small animals to farms
Speaker 1: like rabbits and chickens. And throughout all of this, the
Speaker 1: nurses and other personnel working under the umbrella of the
Speaker 1: American Committee for Devastated France were living in really rough
Speaker 1: conditions themselves. Public works such as water and electricity services
Speaker 1: were not restored for quite some time, and the nurses
Speaker 1: lived in a building that had been severely damaged by bombings.
Speaker 1: Mary wrote quote the American Committee for Devastated France was
Speaker 1: a masterpiece of an organization, not only in its handling
Speaker 1: of direct relief under baffling difficulties, but in later developments
Speaker 1: that were to be integrated into the very heart of
Speaker 1: French life. Mary really fell in love with the people
Speaker 1: of France, and she wrote in one letter to her
Speaker 1: mother that she saw so many families trying to fight
Speaker 1: their way back from malnourishment after the war. She wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: if I could give right now a goat to every
Speaker 1: family that has a baby, I think we could go
Speaker 1: far towards saving many that are dying. There is such
Speaker 1: grip and pneumonia among them that they have no powers
Speaker 1: of resistance. I wish I had a thousand goats right now.
Speaker 1: I wish I had fifty. This goat thing is my
Speaker 1: favorite part of her story. Nine too. Mary's mother passed
Speaker 1: the letter around friends and family, and soon donations of
Speaker 1: money for the purchase of goats poured in to the ACDF.
Speaker 1: Mary would later call this project her goat crusade because
Speaker 1: she also had to raise funds for feed for the
Speaker 1: goats for their breeding, and letters back home to each
Speaker 1: donor to tell them about the family who was benefited
Speaker 1: from their generosity. Yeah, that was kind of before a
Speaker 1: lot of the modern charity organizations do things like that.
Speaker 1: But she was naming goats for families that had bought
Speaker 1: them and then you know, would keep these correspondences going
Speaker 1: of like here's how the family that got your goat
Speaker 1: is doing, which pretty interesting. There's a really great story
Speaker 1: in her autobiography about the first truck, which I think
Speaker 1: had twenty nine goats. Like she opens the door and
Speaker 1: there was one goat that had apparently like destroyed a
Speaker 1: bunch of their medical supplies had like eaten baby bottles,
Speaker 1: which was like, I don't even care. I'm so glad
Speaker 1: the goats are here. And while she was in Europe,
Speaker 1: she also became acquainted with midwiffery practice in both France
Speaker 1: and England, and she felt that it should be established
Speaker 1: in the United States as well. Ever, eager for education,
Speaker 1: I have to admit that problematic though she is, I
Speaker 1: admire her constant quest to be educated, Breckinridge decided to
Speaker 1: formalize her learning on this subject, and she studied midwiffery
Speaker 1: in several different schools in Great Britain and was certified
Speaker 1: by the UK's Central Midwife. And we should note this
Speaker 1: isn't the first time that Mary Beckenridge had been exposed
Speaker 1: to the concept of a midwife assisted birth, and her
Speaker 1: family was in Russia, her mother had a midwife in
Speaker 1: attendance at the birth of Mary's younger brother, and that
Speaker 1: had made an impact on her. And as we're going
Speaker 1: to talk more about later, like midwiffery has been along,
Speaker 1: as has been around in some way as long as
Speaker 1: babies have been Yeah, and in Yeah, she isn't like
Speaker 1: she discovered it now, just kind of how she's sometimes
Speaker 1: framed in the US. Yeah, we had no idea this
Speaker 1: was the thing, and it's like no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're talking about more formal eyes midwiffery training and programs. Additionally,
Speaker 1: she also studied how pre war France had provided for
Speaker 1: infant care, and she learned that the Public Assistance Office
Speaker 1: had this program which allowed new parents to bring their
Speaker 1: babies to a government office, usually like a town hall,
Speaker 1: where a doctor would be for weighing and for advice
Speaker 1: on their care, and that there was also a service
Speaker 1: in some cities of France which provided baby milk stations,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't much education for parents in how to
Speaker 1: handle milk and some of the other medical needs their
Speaker 1: child might have. She saw what she felt was a
Speaker 1: gap in the system in the lack of parent education,
Speaker 1: and she decided that a visiting nurse service could fill
Speaker 1: that gap, so she set up a demonstration version so
Speaker 1: that it could get some data on its successes. Soon
Speaker 1: she was asked to expand the program, and she had
Speaker 1: to really scramble to find properly trained nurses to staff it.
Speaker 1: Yeah her little experiment, people were like, this is great.
Speaker 1: Can you widen your area of coverage? And she was like,
Speaker 1: uh oh. Before long, her nurses were seeing to the
Speaker 1: general health care needs of the communities in which they worked,
Speaker 1: and not just prenatal and early childhood care. She was
Speaker 1: really pleased with her success in this endeavor, but the
Speaker 1: administrative duties that it required took her away from the
Speaker 1: hands on nursing that she loved so much, And as
Speaker 1: her role with the American Committee for Devastated France grew,
Speaker 1: Breckenridge was offered a car and a chauffeur to drive
Speaker 1: her as needed, but she opted to actually pool those
Speaker 1: recals with the other drivers who were already helping to
Speaker 1: deliver aid. Mary also traveled to Scotland to expand her
Speaker 1: medical knowledge while she lived in Europe. There she studied
Speaker 1: a nursing service that cared for a largely rural and
Speaker 1: decentralized patient base. Yeah, that sort of helped her form
Speaker 1: a model for her later work. In nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 1: Mary was ready to return home to be near her parents.
Speaker 1: They were getting older and she definitely felt a poll
Speaker 1: to be with them. She also felt that the programs
Speaker 1: that she had worked to establish in France had reached
Speaker 1: a point where they could continue without her, and she
Speaker 1: felt that it was really important that they do so.
Speaker 1: She was aware that she couldn't stay there and direct
Speaker 1: all of this forever. She wasn't exactly sure what she
Speaker 1: would do next, but she wrote in a letter to
Speaker 1: her mother, quote, I know that the way leads back
Speaker 1: over the ocean to the country where my own children
Speaker 1: were born and where they are buried, the country whose
Speaker 1: development my own people have furthered for nearly two hundred years.
Speaker 1: Despite this resolve, she actually felt really conflicted about leaving France.
Speaker 1: There was pressure to stay and develop nursings programs for France,
Speaker 1: and for her last year she worked tirelessly to fulfill
Speaker 1: this request, only to have effort after effort fall flat.
Speaker 1: She felt in some ways as though she had failed,
Speaker 1: but having friends and associates remark on the incredible improvement
Speaker 1: of the health of France's children really bolstered her. And
Speaker 1: next we're going to delve into the project that consumed
Speaker 1: the rest of Mary Breckinridge's life, in which became her
Speaker 1: claim to fame. But before that, let's take a little
Speaker 1: break and have a word for one of our sponsors.
Speaker 1: Once Mary was back in the United States, she again
Speaker 1: opted for additional education, and she took classes at Teachers
Speaker 1: College of Columbia University that focused on public health nursing.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty five, Mary Breckinridge relocated to Leslie County,
Speaker 1: Kentucky to try to make her idea a reality. She
Speaker 1: had inherited money from her mother, who had passed away
Speaker 1: not long after Mary returned to the United States used
Speaker 1: her inheritance to found in fund the Frontier Nursing Service.
Speaker 1: Her concentration for the service was on prenatal and early
Speaker 1: childhood care, which harkened back to her experiences with the
Speaker 1: families in post war France. She wrote quote in France,
Speaker 1: I felt, as I was to feel later in the
Speaker 1: Kentucky Mountains, that a program for children should begin before
Speaker 1: the children are born and should place emphasis on the
Speaker 1: first six years of life. So she chose the Appalachian
Speaker 1: Mountain area for a number of reasons. I know some
Speaker 1: people like to pronounce it Appalachian. We all do it differently.
Speaker 1: This one is one where I'm good with what I like.
Speaker 1: I grew up in North Carolina and spent seven years
Speaker 1: in western North Carolina, and I say Appalachian. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I grew I was in Florida when I think
Speaker 1: I probably learned that word and they I was taught
Speaker 1: it as Appalachian. But no disrespect to anybody who prefers
Speaker 1: the other pronunciation. I'm just saying, whichever way we say it,
Speaker 1: somebody will be chagrined. So she chose this area, as
Speaker 1: I said, for a number of reasons. First, it was
Speaker 1: woefully underserved medically, and most of the residents were too
Speaker 1: poor to travel elsewhere for care. Second, because her family
Speaker 1: had Southern roots, she believed that she would be able
Speaker 1: to use their prominence to garner funding for her program.
Speaker 1: And third, she was kind of thinking long term, and
Speaker 1: she thought if she could manage to launch a nursing
Speaker 1: service successfully in the decentralized communities of the mountains, covering
Speaker 1: roughly seven hundred square miles, it would be a clear
Speaker 1: proof of concept that similar programs could work almost anywhere.
Speaker 1: So to be clear, it wasn't as though Mary Breckenridge
Speaker 1: was the first person in the United States to think
Speaker 1: midwiffery should be instituted here. And as we said earlier,
Speaker 1: there was more informal midwhiffery going back generations. Even in
Speaker 1: the area of Kentucky where she set up her service,
Speaker 1: there were lay midwives who delivered babies like that has
Speaker 1: been a thing pretty much always, but they didn't have
Speaker 1: actual medical training. Yeah. I think they're referred to in
Speaker 1: uh I'm not sure if it's her autobiography or another
Speaker 1: paper that I was reading about her where they're called
Speaker 1: granny midwives. And it's basically like, you know, an older,
Speaker 1: experienced woman who has been through childbirth herself and then
Speaker 1: kind of helps later generations do the same thing. Well.
Speaker 1: And when a birth goes smoothly, that's often fine, right,
Speaker 1: That's yes, that's often the care that is needed is
Speaker 1: that kind of help. But when things don't go smoothly
Speaker 1: that you want medical training, right, Yeah. And it was
Speaker 1: of course really hard to get this service up and running.
Speaker 1: This was a mountain situation spread all over the place,
Speaker 1: but over time Mary established a home visitation service so
Speaker 1: that patients could receive care without traveling themselves, as well
Speaker 1: as a number of district nursing centers and eventually a hospital.
Speaker 1: Mary's work had obvious results. After her service had been
Speaker 1: established and she had been providing education to nurse midwives
Speaker 1: in Kentucky, the region's neonatal and maternal death rates dropped.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty eight, the FNS opened Heiden Hospital, which
Speaker 1: had twelve beds thanks to money raised through donors. It
Speaker 1: soon ext banded to offer eighteen beds and eight bacinets,
Speaker 1: and an expansion in nineteen forty nine increased patient capacity
Speaker 1: to twenty five beds and twelve bacinets. As a direct
Speaker 1: result of Mary's work and the success of the Frontier
Speaker 1: Nursing Service, the American Association of Nurse Midwives was founded
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty nine, just four years after Breckinridge had
Speaker 1: founded her service. In nineteen thirty one, Mary's cousin, Marvin
Speaker 1: Breckinridge Patterson, directed a film which was called The Forgotten Frontier,
Speaker 1: and it promoted the importance of the Frontier Nursing Service
Speaker 1: and the types of care it offered. The film, which
Speaker 1: is silent, opens with title cards that read, quote, do
Speaker 1: you know that America is still a frontier country for
Speaker 1: about fifteen million people with almost no medical, nursing or
Speaker 1: dental care, and that in our history we have lost
Speaker 1: more women in childbirth than men in war. According to
Speaker 1: that documentary, the maternal mortality rate in the Appalachian Mountains
Speaker 1: was cut by more than two thirds thanks to the
Speaker 1: Frontier Nursing Service. Scenes in the film are reenactments of
Speaker 1: previous events played out by the same people who were
Speaker 1: involved originally and volunteered to recreate moments in there from
Speaker 1: their interactions with the FNS. Yeah. The film features shots
Speaker 1: of Wendover, which was the log cabin that served as
Speaker 1: administrative building and nursing center and guest quarters for the service,
Speaker 1: and it makes it very clear just how remote the
Speaker 1: patients being served by this service were. Guests in the film,
Speaker 1: arriving at the nearest train station had to travel twenty
Speaker 1: five miles by car and then switch to horses before
Speaker 1: they could get to that central headquarters because the road
Speaker 1: ended abruptly and there was nothing but trail after that.
Speaker 1: One of the visitors to the FNS asked how the
Speaker 1: nurses managed to get to their patients during the winter,
Speaker 1: and the reply was, Oh, it's our most important work,
Speaker 1: so of course we go in any kind of weather.
Speaker 1: Nurses were shown on horseback crossing icy rivers in winter
Speaker 1: to deliver babies, and in another scene, a man is
Speaker 1: carried on a makeshift stretcher for seven hours to get
Speaker 1: to the hospital after receiving a gunshot wound. You can
Speaker 1: actually watch this entire documentary online. I will link to it.
Speaker 1: There's an archival version of it that is available. And
Speaker 1: this documentary had a really clear purpose. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: like a hey, this is neat. It was intended to
Speaker 1: help promote the frontier nursing service and more importantly, drum
Speaker 1: up donations. This entire enterprise was privately funded from Mary's
Speaker 1: inheritance as we mentioned before, and from donations, and while
Speaker 1: the FNS continued its work over the next two decades,
Speaker 1: that remained how it kept going through donations. It didn't
Speaker 1: receive any sort of government funding. I don't think until
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties no patient was ever turned away if
Speaker 1: they couldn't pay, but they could offer a trade of
Speaker 1: goods for care. The nurses were authorized to accept that.
Speaker 1: But if they could offer nothing, they still got treatment.
Speaker 1: It seems like that two thirds mortality drop from a
Speaker 1: promotional documentary might be a little inflated, but still there
Speaker 1: was an obvious positive impact. Yeah, in the nursing service. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little tricky. That's one of the things that
Speaker 1: it would be an easy number to fudge because a
Speaker 1: lot of the people in those remote areas were not
Speaker 1: necessarily reporting things like bursts and mortalities regularly to the government,
Speaker 1: so we don't know how accurate. But I agree it
Speaker 1: seems a little Yes, that's a big number. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is a big number. But like unquestionably, having access to
Speaker 1: basic medical care that wasn't there before would have made
Speaker 1: a big difference. World War Two impacted the way in
Speaker 1: which the nurses for the FNS were trained. Before nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, many of the nurses were sent to Great
Speaker 1: Britain to train as midwives, just as Mary herself had done,
Speaker 1: but the tensions in Europe surrounding the war made that unsustainable,
Speaker 1: and it was then that Breckenridge founded the Frontier Graduate
Speaker 1: School of Midwiffery. The school continues today under the name
Speaker 1: Frontier Nursing University. Yeah, obviously it has changed and involved
Speaker 1: and modernized, but it is still the thing that has
Speaker 1: grown out of that core entity. In nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: Mary published her autobiography, which was titled Wide Neighborhoods The
Speaker 1: Story of the Frontier Nursing Service. Once again, this was
Speaker 1: at least in part, a way to make money for
Speaker 1: or the FNS. The proceeds from the sale of the
Speaker 1: book went right back into keeping the people of rural
Speaker 1: Kentucky care for and educated about their health. Breckinridge died
Speaker 1: on May sixteenth, nineteen sixty five, in Hyde in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: She worked right up until the end. I mean she
Speaker 1: literally she had fallen off a horse at one point
Speaker 1: and had to wear a brace, but she still had
Speaker 1: to keep riding the horses to get to her patients.
Speaker 1: She was working basically until the day she died, which
Speaker 1: is all pretty inspirational, But we got to talk about
Speaker 1: the problematic parts. Now. While Breckenridge's contributions to medicine are undeniable,
Speaker 1: she had some deeply problematic views. First, she was a
Speaker 1: fan of eugenics. From early on in her career. She
Speaker 1: wrote articles for publications such as Southern Women's magazine, in
Speaker 1: which she encouraged women to carefully select their mates as
Speaker 1: only people of quote good blood should be having children.
Speaker 1: Eugenics was by the nineteen teens gaining popularity in the
Speaker 1: United States as a way to eradicate disease infirmity. As
Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to our podcast about the Calikacs
Speaker 1: and the eugenicists, like, we talk a lot about how
Speaker 1: this wasn't just something that was a fringe element in society.
Speaker 1: It was like a mainstream taught in standard high school
Speaker 1: biology textbooks kind of thing. So it is absolutely easy
Speaker 1: to see why someone interested in nursing might have been
Speaker 1: into eugenics. But the way most eugenicists in the United
Speaker 1: States envisioned these improvements was specifically through keeping the bloodlines
Speaker 1: pure without integration of immigrants into families. Breckenridge believed that
Speaker 1: women in the US were duty bound to have healthy
Speaker 1: babies to keep the country strong, and that to do so,
Speaker 1: those babies had to be white, ideally white blood from
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxon roots. Yeah, she definitely had like a hierarchy
Speaker 1: of even people that would all be sort of umbrella
Speaker 1: under white of which ones were the best kind of
Speaker 1: went Anglo Saxon Nordic and then kind of went down
Speaker 1: from there, Like she really very clearly had no problems
Speaker 1: comparing people and deciding which ones she thought were the
Speaker 1: good ones and which ones were lesser. She also thought
Speaker 1: that women couldn't be creative like men because their creativity
Speaker 1: expressed itself biologically through making children. And while an official
Speaker 1: stance on birth control wasn't included any literature of the
Speaker 1: Frontier Nursing Service, Mary Breckinridge believed that contraceptives weren't as
Speaker 1: good a remedy for rural Kentucky's problems as education would be.
Speaker 1: She had to personally approve any tubal ligations performed by
Speaker 1: the service, and even then she would only do it
Speaker 1: if there was a medical reason or for women who
Speaker 1: already had at least five children. Yeah, she didn't seem
Speaker 1: to really get super involved in any of the politics
Speaker 1: surrounding other aspects of healthcare outside of like maternal and children.
Speaker 1: And she even wrote that she thought like birth control
Speaker 1: was in staying in that you know, that was that
Speaker 1: was good for some people, but not for her patients,
Speaker 1: which is a little again, she's problematic. Five years after
Speaker 1: Mary's death, ground was broken for a new hospital to
Speaker 1: be built and named for her, and the Mery Breckenridge
Speaker 1: Hospital was dedicated in nineteen seventy five. So it took
Speaker 1: a while to build and it assumed the general care
Speaker 1: duties that had been handled previously at the Heiden Hospital,
Speaker 1: and then the Heiden facility was converted into a teaching center,
Speaker 1: the Frontier School of Midwiffery and Family Nursing. In nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, Mary Breckinridge was posthumously inducted into the American
Speaker 1: the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame. As of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: there were thirty nine accredited graduate midwiffery programs in the
Speaker 1: United States and more than eleven thousand certified midwives and
Speaker 1: certified nurse midwives. So while she is considered the the
Speaker 1: sort of mother of midwiffery in the United States, it
Speaker 1: really grew very quickly and clearly. I mean it was
Speaker 1: address seeing a need that was there already, and other
Speaker 1: people were super interested in really more than midwiffrey. I
Speaker 1: feel like she should be maybe lauded as a person
Speaker 1: who introduced medical like formalized medical training in general. Uh
Speaker 1: with us. Mary Breckenridge. Thanks so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive,
Speaker 1: if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL
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Speaker 1: could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History
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