Royal Heroines

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume II, Issue 2, 1 April 1909, Page 54

Royal Heroines

Dealing with the bravery so often exhibited by royal personages in great emergencies, an English paper says : — " The Empress Eugenie atoned for many of the shortcomings laid at her door by the manner in which, on the occasion of the great cholera outbreak in France, in 1866, she visited all the hospitals in Rouen, where the disease was raging with the greatest intensity ; while, on another occasion, during a particularly violent-epi-demic of small-pox, she did not hesitate to go through the hospitals in Paris to encourage the doctors and nurses to remain at their post of duty, although by so doing she risked those good looks, and that beauty, which constituted her principal if not indeed, her only claim to sovereignty. " Nor would any reference to European monarchs in this connection be complete without a brief mention of the widowed Queen Amelie of Portugal, who, having

rendered herself immune from diphtheria by inoculation, with the object of removing the popular prejudice against this form of vaccination, was wont, until the murder of her husband and her eldest son, a year ago, to visit the diphtheria wards of the Lisbon hospitals each week. She showed an even still greater bravery at the time of the last outbreak of the bubonic plague in Portugal. While it lasted she appeared daily in the hospitals, and herself acted as the nurse, and attended the deathbed of a young physician who succumbed to the malady while ministering to the stricken. She is a trained nurse and a full-fledged physician, being the only occupant of a throne who is entitled to add the letters " M.D. " to the list of her dignities." — From the Dominion. King Edward has given the decoration of the ReDyal Red Cross to Her Majesty Queen Elena in recognition of her services in Messina after the late terrible disaster.