Thursday, June 21, 2012

Thursday Tab- Merrill Army Nurse and Doctor, 1943

This set (with one page partially cut and one dress missing), is absolutely stunning. Thanks for sharing, Dottie!











3 comments:

Jan said...

Hi Kathleen, Thursday is my favorite day to read your blog. Could it be because I can also collect a paperdoll? hmmm... Your blog is a great read any day but sure love Thursday. Jan

Corissia said...

Oooh, I love a paper doll in uniform. The cover art is gorgeous.

Sharid57 said...

The cover art is definitely beautiful and well done! I wish I could have had them all in the early 60's when I was stuck at home, in bed, with not just the chicken pox but the chicken pox followed IMMEDIATELY thereafter by the German measles! I mean IMMEDIATELY THEREAFTER. I got up to get dressed to go back to school after being home for at least 10 days with the Chicken pox, only to discover a NEW disease popping up all over me! It was the German measles, which I had apparently been incubating the whole time I was at home with the Chicken pox! This time was even worse though, because I not only had to stay home again, and longer than the first time, but I could not read or watch TV or do anything involving my eyes! I had already become a voracious reader at the age of 6, and to forbid me to read, to stay in a darkened room 24/7, and take away TV at the same time was tantamount to pure torture! I was completely miserable. Of course, paper dolls would have been out as well, but I could have at least enjoyed them throughout my battle with chicken pox.
But, when I was 9, I was gifted with my mother's first edition copies of Cherry Ames books, for at least the first five stories, which only whetted my appetite for nursing literature that much more, especially since I was battling a virulent strain of some kind of evil flu bug that was running rampant up and down the East Coast at the time. This would have been sometime around the mid to later 1960's I think. It was so bad, that doctors had taken up making house calls again! They were trying to keep their patients in their beds where they belonged, and out of the general public where they could spread it around more, including in their offices! Those who could not manage this I guess had established separate waiting and exam rooms for those who had it or suspected they had it, and those who just had to come in for something totally unrelated. All the staff wore masks, and were washing hands and things quite often, which, since it was noticeable, I guess they had not been doing as often before! It was terrible, and kept me home at least a week from school. My stepdad worked downtown in an enormous office building at the biggest Shipbuilding company on the east coast, and we figured he must have brought it home with him, since my mother didn't work, and my two siblings were still babies and didn't go anywhere! In any case, my grandmother ended up coming to stay and take care of all of us, when both my parents got it too. The doctor showed up to take care of all of us, but I'm not sure what it was he could do, other than support for the symptoms. I remember getting a shot, in my own bed, in my own house, which seemed very strange to me! When I started feeling a little bit better, I played with paper dolls some, and read my books, but that was about all I could manage. I did love reading those books though, which these paper dolls could have easily fit right in with, since they were definitely 1940's Wartime nurses and doctors!
Thanks so much for printing them here, and for forgiving me my reminiscing of such a long time ago!