Selma Mayer (3 February 1884 – 5 February 1984) known as Schwester Selma (German: Sister Selma or Nurse Selma) was an Israeli nurse who was the head nurse at the original Shaare Zedek Hospital on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem for nearly 50 years. For many years she was the right-hand assistant of the hospital's founding director, Dr. Moshe Wallach. Working long hours and with limited infrastructure, she trained and supervised all personnel at the hospital from 1916 to the 1930s, and founded the Shaare Zedek School of Nursing in 1934. She never married, and resided in a room in the hospital until her last day. In her later years she became known as the "Jewish Florence Nightingale" for her decades of selfless devotion to patient welfare.
Early life and education
Selma Mayer was born on 3 February 1884, in Hanover, Germany, to a poor Jewish family. Her mother died in childbirth when Selma was five years old, leaving five young orphans. Selma later wrote, "Because I lost my mother very early and therefore had a rather difficult youth, a strong need grew in me to give people that which I had missed so much: mother-love and love of human beings. Therefore I chose the profession of nursing".
In 1906 she began working as a nurse at the Salomon Heine Hospital in Hamburg. She received on-the-job training in the hospital's departments of internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics. In 1913 she and another nurse passed the government's nursing licensing exams, becoming the first Jewish nurses to receive a German State Diploma.
Head nurse
In 1890 the Frankfurt-based Central Committee for the Construction of a Jewish Hospital in Jerusalem sent Dr. Moshe Wallach, a German-Jewish doctor, to Palestine to open a Jewish hospital. In 1902 he opened Shaare Zedek Hospital on Jaffa Road, the first Jewish hospital in the New City. Wallach began with two trained European nurses, Schwester Stybel and Schwester Van Gelder, but one quit due to the "primitive conditions" that existed at Shaare Zedek in those years and the other fled to Germany during World War I. In dire need of a head nurse, Wallach returned to Europe in 1916, during World War I. He was impressed with the similar organizational structure of the Salomon Heine Hospital in Hamburg, and asked the head nurse there if she could spare one of her staff. The 32-year-old Selma Mayer was recommended, and agreed to a three-year contract to fulfill her war service in Palestine.
Embarking on a four-week train journey through Central Europe, Turkey, and Damascus, Schwester Selma arrived at Shaare Zedek in December 1916. Several weeks later, Jerusalem was hit by a year-long typhoid epidemic, and typhus and meningitis also raged in the city. The 40-bed hospital, which added another 110 beds to accommodate patients, was inundated. The hospital recruited untrained workers, whom Schwester Selma outfitted in "overalls and hoods" to protect them from infection; she ordered all incoming patients washed and shaved over their entire bodies. Schwester Selma also introduced German standards of nursing to the wards, including white uniforms for all hospital personnel, changing of uniforms and bed sheets daily, and daily bathing of all patients.
While attempting to provide a high level of patient care for Jews, Christians, and Arabs, Shaare Zedek operated without electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating, or gas cooking stoves. Kerosene heaters were used to warm bathwater, and paraffin lamps were used in the operating room. It was difficult to retain staff due to the working conditions and to the exacting, temperamental nature of Dr. Wallach. Nevertheless, Schwester Selma worked 18-hour days, and expected her nurses and aides to display the same work ethic.
During that era, hospital nurses and midwives were trained on the job. Schwester Selma trained and supervised all the nurses, operating-room nurses, and midwives in the hospital, teaching the former how to make a hospital bed and the latter how to diaper newborns and swaddle infants. Sometimes she also substituted for the midwives, who did not live on the premises. For many years, Schwester Selma was Dr. Wallach's right-hand assistant in the areas of uterine curettages, tracheotomies, and ritual circumcisions, accompanied him on house calls, and stood in for him as hospital director when he was away. From 1916 to 1930 she was also in charge of supplies and building maintenance, and making sure the kashrut in the kitchen met Dr. Wallach's strict standards.