8vo. vii, 118 pp., [1], half-title, title printed in red, original cloth backed boards, title labelled on front cover, b/w photographic plates, previous owner’s inscription on front end paper, otherwise copy clean and in very good condition, Country Life / Charles Scribners Sons, London/New York, 1924.

Synopsis

Dame Anne Louise McIlroy was born in County Antrim on the 11th November 1874 to Dr James McIlroy, a medical practitioner in Ballycastle. She shared her father’s enthusiasm for Medicine and came to Glasgow University in 1894 to do a medical degree.
At the outbreak of the First World War she and other female medical graduates offered their services to the government. They were declined on grounds of the battlefield being no place for women. Undeterred and determined to help with the war effort this brave group of women applied to the French government and, on being accepted, set up the Scottish Women’s Hospital for Foreign Service. Dame McIlroy commanded a unit of the hospital at Troyes in France before being posted to Serbia and three years later Salonika.
“ The notes for this volume were written in Constantinople during the occupation by the Allied Armies, 1919-20, and deal with the conditions as they were at that period. In no way do I endeavour to make it a personal narrative. It is merely a picture of the scenes and life in the city during the Armistice days as they presented themselves to me.” (Foreword).