Bulletin

              SPANISH MEDICAL AID COMMITTEE
24 New Oxford Street, W.C.1
FEBRUARY BULLETIN
There is so much news from Spain this month that we have cut out everything else from this Bulletin.   Please when you have read it hand it on to your friends.
News of the Autochir which was sent out only a few weeks ago.
"Just before the Teruel attack the autochir was ordered to its base at Ucles.   Driven by Jim Smyth and Chas. Innosent it set out with Dr. Fuhrman and Nurse Cresswell.   On Christmas Day Dr. Fuhrman was in Teruel.   The Spanish Medical Service started a hospital at once in Teruel.    Our autochir worked in connection with a hospital train.   A surgical unit went from the train,and our autochir was able to release them by treating cases before they were put onto the train.   Dr. Fuhrman himself saw four British ambulances in use outside Teruel, and many cases were actually brought to the autochir in these ambulances.
Of the cases that we treated, there were more prisoners than our own wounded.   These, Dr. Fuhrman assured us, were all treated exactly the same as our own, each wounded man being taken in turn according to the seriousness of his injuries.   The slogan: EQUAL WITH US, was really carried out.  The next type of case that we had to treat was the women and children who were shot by the fascists as they fled to us from the city.   One little lad of 11 ran out when he saw our tanks approaching.   He cried out, 'Look! Look! and the fascists shot him in the back.   We picked him up and he was brought to our autochir.
After we had operated our patients were taken to Valencia. We visited them there and once again we found that the prisoners were placed in equally clean and pleasant wards as our own soldiers."
Here is an account of one of our nurses,  'English Penny', from Winifred Bates.
' "I want to see Comrade Penny",  I explained to the guard at the door.   He showed me into the surgery.   Warmth, light and spotless cleanliness.
"But how is it that you are here all alone without other English comrades?" I asked her.
"I came back from leave in England in September", she replied "intending to go to a large hospital where there are already a few English working, and where I know they are very short of trained nurses.   When I reported at the base I was told that there was an outbreak of scarlet fever at a barracks in a small town.   'You are a trained fever-nurse, Penny'  they said,  'so you must go there'. So I went.   I arrived at this little village at 3 in the morning, and found that some hundreds of men were quartered there.   I found not only scarlet fever, but measles and typhoid and the doctor himself was down with scarlet fever.    The next morning I set to work and have been at the job ever since".
The next day Penny took me all over the hospital, the soldiers' Cultural Club and the baths.   The hospital itself is a very pleasant clean small house able to support about twenty beds for the sick besides the personnel.   In reply to my question about the staff she said  "My staff consists of a Spanish nurse and an Italian nurse and one male nurse.    These have had considerable experience and we work very happily together, for of course they regard me as the doctor, there being no other doctor here.    But I have no British trained nurse to assist me.      That is why I am consulted on every