Prowlers, Deliriums, the Pest House Held No Fears by Helen Myers (Poughkeepsie New Yorker, December 10, 1950) It was very, very early, and time to make rounds again, one spring morning in 1892. Most of the 30 odd patients of Vassar Hospital's four wards were sleeping. Seventeen-year-old Martha Karnofski, a first-year student and the only nurse on duty, stood fearfully in the doorway of the women's surgical ward with a lighted candle in her hand. She peered anxiously down the corridor that separated the men's and women's surgical wards. That corridor was dimly lighted at either end with a gas jet that was turned way down. The middle section was a dark cavern, and it was that part that she feared, specifically the area nearest the pharmacy and its silent occupant. She moved down the corridor just enough to be out of sight of any wakeful patients in the women's ward. Then she gathered her sweeping uniform skirt and stiffly starched petticoat in her free hand, lifted her candle, and ran as fast as she could. Just before she reached the doorway of the men's surgical ward she dropped her skirts and walked in with the dignity befitting a nurse. She didn't want any of the patients to know that she had run past the pharmacy. Young Martha Karnofski is now Mrs. Robert Ogden, a resident of the Old Ladies' Home. When members of the staff of Vassar Hospital want to know anything about the old days at the hospital they ask Mrs. Ogden or Mrs. Robert C. Workman of 10 Vassar View Road. Mrs. Ogden was graduated in the class of '94, the second at the hospital, and Mrs. Workman a year later. She was then Mary Jane Blass, the first Pine Plains girl to become a trained nurse. There were just nine student nurses when Mrs. Ogden began training, three in the class of '93 and six in hers. Miss Gertrude Deyo, a graduate of Orange Memorial Hospital in Orange, N.J. was "head nurse" and the only graduate on the staff. There were no interns or orderlies. In fact, the students had never heard of an intern.
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