Many women of the leisure class were taking it in 1910.
"I think I will, too," she had said to her husband. "Some elemental knowledge of the scientific facts of nursing I really ought to have when the children are ill." There were five children, four little daughters and a son. And the Viscount thought of them and reluctantly gave his consent.
"Very well, Elizabeth," he had said. "I think I am willing that you should hear the lectures. But on this I shall insist, my dear: I cannot permit you to take the practical bedside demonstration work. I don't wish to think of my wife doing that kind of menial service even for instruction purposes, and I simply could not have you so exposed to all sorts of infection."
Like that it happened when Elizabeth, the Viscountess D'Azy, arrived at the battle-front to which she was first called at Gérardmer; she had had no practical nursing experience. Oh, she got it right away. She had quite some within twenty-four hours. But up to now, this flashing white moment of life which she faced so suddenly, she had not so much as filled a hot-water bag for any one. And she had never seen a man die.
At this military barracks where she took off her hat to don the flowing white headdress with the red cross in the centre of the forehead, one hundred and fifty men, some of them delirious with agony, some of them just moaning with pain, all of them wounded and waiting most necessary attention, lay
