Nostalgia Sunday – Shaare Zedek Hospital’s Schwester Selma
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Medical Breakthroughs, Nostalgia Sunday, Profiles
I didn’t know Schwester Selma but there is one time when perhaps our paths might have crossed. That would be in 1973, when my sisters and I were rushed to Jerusalem’s old Shaare Zedek hospital after a car accident (we came out with minor cuts, bruises, a few stitches in my sister’s forehead and a lifetime of self-enforced responsible driving ahead of us). Schwester Selma served from 1916 as head nurse and retired in 1973, so who knows?
The country’s first trained nurse, Schwester Selma was one of those legendary Jerusalem institutions from the pre-State era that people of my mother’s generation knew well, their children knew somewhat and their grandchildren know not at all. I encountered Schwester Selma’s biography while looking into the background of a series of photos documenting the old hospital building, which believe you me, was nothing like the new one – I can still remember the patchwork of floor tiles – but thank goodness the hospital was easy to reach and not in the middle of some out-of-the-way forest like some other Jerusalem hospitals I could mention if I cared to.
Here it is on Jaffa Road. The building now houses the Israel Broadcast Authority offices.
Then, as now, Shaare Zedek prided itself on being the only centrally located hospital in Jerusalem. There were the Misgav LaDach birthing hospital and general hospital Bikur Holim was under construction but Shaare Zedek was pretty much it during the World War I when Selma Meyer arrived to do her wartime service in Palestine (the Turkish Ottoman Empire was allied with Germany during the war).
Her autobiography includes a couple of juicy tidbits about illness and cure back in the so-called Good Old Days: “There were two epidemics right them. We were the only Jewish hospital in the new city. The old Bikur Cholim had also started building in the new city, which, however, could not be continued because of the war. Typhoid, typhus, and meningocael meningitis, all very severe cases, were hospitalized with us. Thousands of typhoid cases were passing through our hospital, probably caused by dirt; there was hardly any water. Additionally the people suffered terribly from hunger; there was hardly anything to eat.” Out of discretion to the reader, I’ve cut out the part about the lice bath.
It must have seemed like heaven for patients to come to a place like Shaare Zedek, which had a European-trained staff and clean sheets. There was no running water, but who had running water in those days?
After all, Jerusalem was no modern city. “There was still no transportation. The transportation of patients was therefore still very complicated. If somebody had to be brought it would have to be done by stretcher. We did not have enough personnel to send along and therefore the relatives had to help or hire two porters.”
During the global polio epidemic, Schwester Selma ran the country’s only isolation ward. “In those days the isolation department was even more primitive than the main house. The bathtub was made of tin, on wheels. It used to be filled with water that was brought in and then wheeled into the respective room. The toilets had no plumbing. Of course there was no heating system. In spite of all this I can maintain with a good conscience that we ran this department as a real isolation station even if this demanded many many efforts, which were well worth it in every respect.”
Schwester Selma founded the country’s first nursing school in 1934 over the objections of her hospital director who believed that too much theory and not enough practicum was a bad thing in a young nurse. But Selma, together with one father who wanted to make sure his daughter got a good education, prevailed. (Selma seated 2nd row, 3rd from left).
In recognition of her achievements, “Schwester” Selma Meyer was named a Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem (Yakir Yerushalim). She died in 1984 at the age of 100.
More amazing photos of Shaare Tzedek hospital and other Jerusalem landmarks, can be found at Photography in Jerusalem, an online archive sponsored by Hadassah College Jerusalem and educational website Snunit.
Israel picks up the bill
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Medical Breakthroughs, Politics, War, coexistence
While the news is full of Israel’s “crimes” against the civilian population in Gaza, here’s one “crime” you probably haven’t heard about. Israel routinely admits residents of Palestinian Authority controlled territory into its hospitals – and the Israeli taxpayer foots the bill. Not only that; Israel even helps pay for treatment of patients in PA hospitals, where the patient never even comes near an Israeli hospital!
While many of us probably have heard of exceptional cases of Israeli doctors treating PA Arabs, I, and probably you, were under the impression that it was limited to high profile or complicated cases, such as the Save a Child’s Heart Foundation – with ill PA residents coming to Israel as a last resort. That kind of thing has been going on for a long time – even during the current war, as evidenced by the photo (courtesy of the IDF spokesperson), captioned “Injured Palestinian receiving medical treatment by Israeli and Palestinian medical personnel at the Erez crossing.” 
But Israel’s contribution to the health of Palestinian Authority residents goes far beyond emergency assistance; according to some folks I interviewed for a story on a new database system being developed by an Israeli software company for hospitals in Bethlehem and Ramallah (an amazing story in and of itself!), Israel’s Health Ministry often pays for care of PA residents both in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority itself!
The company building the database, called i-Rox, is located in Bnei Brak, and consists almost entirely of ultra-Orthodox women programmers (this story just gets better all the time!). According to the company’s CEO, the programmers are building in a component that allows PA hospitals to share their information with Israel’s Health Ministry, because in some cases, Israel’s health funds help provide – and pay for – treatment of patients in PA hospitals.
Yes, I had a hard time believing it too – until I Googled this World Health Organization PDF document. According to this eye-opening reporting (for 2006-7), “Approximately 60,000 Palestinians from the West Bank area have been treated in Israel hospitals over the past year. Around 20,000 were hospitalized, and about 40,000 received ambulatory services of all sorts. Approximately 5,000 patients from the Gaza area have been treated in Israeli hospitals over the past year – about 2,000 hospitalized and about 3,000 receiving ambulatory services of all sorts. Among the patients receiving medical care in Israel, approximately 2,500 were children, the majority of whom received long-term treatment for cancer and complicated operations.”
As far as Israel providing services to PA hospitals, “Public health laboratories at the Israel Ministry of Health continue to regularly provide assistance to the Palestinian Health Authority in the way of laboratory tests for poliomyelitis, measles, mumps, influenza and other viral diseases,” the report says. Israel – via the health funds and the Health Ministry – continued those tests throughout the year, “in spite of the fact that the Palestinian Authority delays or halts payments.” Of course, the anti-Israel forces out there have never let themselves get confused by the facts – but at least we know the truth, and in this day and age, that’s no small feat.
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