Sisters' hospital: The sisters of Providence and St. Patrick hospital, Missoula, Montana, 1873-1890

IN MID-APRIL 1873 FOUR FRENCH-CANADIAN SISTERS OF PROVIDENCE AND A PRIEST ARRIVED IN MISSOULA, MONTANA TERRITORY, TO INSPECT THE HOUSE AND LAND THEY HAD PURCHASED NEAR THE CENTER OF THE SETTLEMENT. TWO OF THE WOMEN TOOK CHARGE OF REMODELING THE HOUSE INTO A HOSPITAL, A SMALL CHAPEL, AND SCHOOL, THE ENTIRE ENTERPRISE COLLECTIVELY NAMED THE PROVIDENCE OF THE SACRED HEART. IN AUGUST THE SISTERS ADMITTED THEIR FIRST PATIENT TO WHAT WOULD BECOME ST. PATRICK HOSPITAL.1 PATIENTS IMMEDIATELY BEGAN USING THE HOSPITAL, TAXING THE SISTERS AS WELL AS THE MISSION'S CAPACITY AND OCCASIONALLY PUTTING THE SISTERS' LIVES AT RISK. THEIR WORK FILLED A CRUCIAL NEED IN THE NEW TOWN AND IN THE REGION. By 1890 THE HOSPITAL, NOW HOUSED IN A NEW, MODERN BUILDING, HAD BECOME AN INTEGRAL PART OF WESTERN MONTANA LIFE.

The organizer and guiding light of the women's religious community that established St. Patrick Hospital was Emilie Gamelin of Montreal, Quebec. Born Emilie Tavernier in 1800. Gamelin attended religious schools and often assisted Montreal's poor. She married Jean Baptiste Gamelin in 1823 but was widowed after only four years of marriage. The couple's three children all died in infancy. In the wake of these tragedies, Madame Gamelin resumed her charitable activities. During the early 1840s she became a sister and formalized her work by establishing the Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Poor. popularly known as the Sisters of Providence.2 The sisters' mission included educating the young and providing care for the sick and elderly. Their religious community grew rapidly, both in number and in geographical reach. In 1858 the order opened a hospital at Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory. staffed by five sisters and led by Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart (Pariseau).3

At about the same time the Sisters of Providence began their work, the Society of Jesus-the Jesuits-undertook similar activities in Montana. In 1841 Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, S.J., established St. Mary's Mission in the Bitter- root Valley, and Father Adrian Hoecken, SJ., opened St. Ignatius Mission in 1854 to proselytize local Indians. By 1863 the Jesuits had decided to start an Indian school at St. Ignatius. For help in staffing the school, the Jesuits turned to Mother Joseph at Fort Vancouver. Four French-speaking Sisters of Providence journeyed to St. Ignatius in September 1864.4

In the late 1860s western Montana was an isolated region dominated by mining, lumbering, and milling activities, and the St. Ignatius Mission lay far from major trade and transportation routes. The nearest settlement of any size was Missoula, fortyfive miles south across a mountain

pass. Missoula was itself a raw settlement and only beginning to organize public services, including medical care. One factor hindering this effort was a lack of nurses or others willing to minister to recuperating patients. Western Montana residents needed a hospital that could provide medical and convalescent care. The presence of the Sisters of Providence at St. Ignatius offered a possible solution to Missoula County's problem.

With this in mind, in November 1872 Missoula physician Dr. Emil Henke wrote to Father Laurence B. Palladino, the Jesuit in charge of St. Ignatius, to encourage the Sisters of Providence to submit a bid on the county contract for care of the poor. Henke assured Palladino that "it would be not only Christian duty" but also potentially profitable to undertake this project; the county paid a flat rate for care of the poor, and the sisters "may not have a single county patient" Henke hoped the sisters would consider his proposal for two reasons: he wished "to place the [indigent] County sick in the best hands possible" and "to have likewise a good place for the private sick," the paying patients who needed sustained care. "[B]e assured that you shall not be a loser as far as medical treatment & medicine are concerned" wrote Henke.5

Such invitations were not unusual in the mid- to late nineteenth century when developments in medical knowledge, especially surgery and laboratory medicine, spurred the growth of hospitals. The first American religious women to serve in this capacity were the Sisters of Charity of Emmitsburg, Maryland, who in 1823 started caring for seamen and local poor at a Baltimore infirmary operated by the University of Maryland. Between 1840 and 1880 women's religious communities founded at least 106 hospitals across the country, including institutions in Helena (1870), Deer Lodge (1873), and Virginia City (1876). The willingness of women religious to provide medical care in places where others might not-cities threatened by epidemics, rough mining and lumber camps, and unruly towns in the newly settled West-helps explain the increase in the number of hospitals run by religious orders. Sisters constituted an ideal group to fulfill the need for medical care: they were without family responsibilities, organized in well-functioning groups, disciplined and obedient to authority, mobilized to go where needed, committed to the fulfillment of the tasks they set out to accomplish, and not disposed to flee in the face of dangers. In addition, such women were well equipped to do hospital work. Their structured lives in convents prepared them for difficult and unpleasant tasks, and they knew how to run wards, control unruly patients, and provide patients with nourishing food in a restful, clean environment.6