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20 Working Nurse l WorkingNurse.com September 7–October 5, 2020 PROFILES IN NURSING by Aaron Severson I n 1891, English nurse Kate Marsden made a grueling 11,000-mile trek across Siberia in search of a rare herb purported to cure leprosy. She survived this perilous adventure only to find herself in a different sort of predicament when she returned home. Around the World Born in Middlesex, England, Kate Marsden began her training as a nurse at Tottenham Hospital at age 17. In 1877, at the age of 18, she joined a group of nurse volunteers in Bulgaria, treating casualties of the Russo- Turkish War. After returning to England, Marsden continued working as a nurse in London and later in Liverpool. In 1885, she moved to New Zealand to care for her dying sister and remained there for the next four years, briefly serving as lady superintendent of Wellington Hospital and becoming a well-known nurse lec- turer. She also had several romantic relationships with other women, some of which would later come back to haunt her. Crusade Against Leprosy Around the time she returned to England in 1889, the 30-year-old Marsden decided to launch a crusade against leprosy, which she had first encountered in Bulgaria and which had recently been much in the news. Leprosy is a bacterial infection that causes lesions, nerve damage and sometimes horrifying deformity. Although the disease is actually less contagious than was popularly sup- posed, sufferers were shunned and stig- matized. "Cut off from their fellow-crea- tures, avoided, despised and doomed to a living death — surely these, of all afflicted people, ought to become the object of my mission," she later wrote. Marsden's plans took a number of fortuitous turns. First, the Russian Red Cross invited her to St. Petersburg, Russia, to receive a medal for her wartime work. Before her departure, Marsden received an audience with Queen Victoria and, with the aid of Alexandra, the Princess of Wales, arranged an audience with Russia's Empress Maria Feodorovna, Alexandra's sister. During that audience in April 1890, the empress expressed support for Marsden's project and provided her with a letter of introduction, which would later prove invaluable. Marsden spent the next few months traveling and studying leprosy. In Constantinople, she heard of a rare Siberian herb that could supposedly treat or cure the disease. She was keenly interested, since Louis Pasteur himself had recently warned her that there was little hope of a vaccine. Setting aside her original plan to go to India, she decided to investigate. In November 1890, Marsden, armed with her letter from the empress, arrived in Moscow and presented her- self to the governor-general, Prince Vladimir Andreevich Dolgorukov. "The etiquette at such audiences is to appear in full day dress," she later recalled. "Happily, I had my nurse's uniform, which suits all occasions." She spent the next three months ingratiating herself with the Russian nobility, raising funds and preparing for her journey. On Feb. 1, 1891, Marsden and her friend Ada Field, a Russian- speaking missionary who'd agreed to act as her translator, set out across Siberia to find this mysterious herb. Ten Months in Siberia Marsden's Siberian odyssey was no pleasure trip. After a cold and uncom- fortable journey through the Urals by sledge, Field was too sick to continue, so Marsden went on without her, traveling Kate Marsden (1859–1931) An English nurse's Siberian quest and persistent scandal In Constantinople, Marsden learned of a rare Siberian herb that could cure leprosy. She decided to investigate.