Chapter 1

Some years ago I was doing research for my graduate thesis. I was looking through the university library card catalog for material about the Irish playwright John Millington Synge. Following the last card for "Synge, John Millington," the next card was for a manuscript. It was a biographical piece about a woman named Nightingale Synge (not related to the playwright).

I had not thought about Nightingale Synge for many years until recently I came across that note while I culled some of my old papers for discard. That was what put me in mind of her story once more and led me to write this.

Here are my notes taken from the card: "Synge, Nightingale Emma. (1865-1946). Pioneer Sexual Therapist." Carmody-Bellisario, Maxine K. Unpublished Manuscript. 1972. 378 typed double-spaced pages., Synge founded a quasi-religious group of unconventional caregivers, The Nightingale Sisterhood, self-described practitioners of "Restorative Genito-Urologic Therapy."

It piqued my curiosity so I read the manuscript. I had to read it at the library since it was not in circulation. I found it quirky but fascinating. Regrettably I did not make a copy of it. Now I could kick myself. But I've pulled together what I can recall. You'll have to forgive me for the gaps and some fragmentary bits.

She had been a professional registered nurse; her father a doctor and her mother taken by consumption when Gale was 14. An only child, she grew up quickly. She helped her father in his practice and despite her youth, she ran his household, aided by a longtime retainer; an elderly housekeeper who was completely devoted to the doctor. Dr. Synge taught Nightingale medicine and gave her clinical exposure and he helped her get a student nursing position. In two years she sat for examination and received a registered nursing credential. Old Dr. Synge wanted his daughter to be physician like himself; that at a time when few women could achieve admission to medical school. But Gale's nature led her to take up nursing.

Three traits dominated her character. In combination these compelled her to take a path that placed her in more direct and personal contact with her patients than the role of physician. First, she was very devout and religiously minded. Second, she was a deeply compassionate person. She viewed her role as a nurse not as an occupation but rather as a vocation to which the Lord had called her. At the same time, and this was her third dominant trait; Nightingale Synge was suffused with an exceptionally ardent libido.

Being of resolute mind Miss Synge was able to balance these qualities, both intellectually and emotionally. Prayer, the Bible and church with its rituals and activities gave sustenance to her faith and devotion. Patient care and attendance, aiding and comforting those broken and crippled or afflicted with disease or illness satisfied her powerful impulse to care for others.

Her religious fervor and her heartfelt compassion for others filled her cup to the brim. She never married. Ironically she had no time to devote to build an intimate relationship with another. Although she was possessed of womanly endowments that could quicken a man's desire she was neither voluptuous nor more than comely; far from stunningly attractive. The unfortunate upshot of Gale's life was that her religious convictions and her deep compassion for her patients, wrapped in a professional clinical veneer. left no place for her to commit to a significant other, man or woman. Apart from the usual adolescent mutual anatomical explorations she remained a virgin to the extent that no man (or woman) had penetrated her vagina.

She acknowledged in a frank and practical way, learned under her father's instruction, to confront her frequent need for sexual release; often acute and urgent. Old Dr. Synge never imposed himself in any taboo way upon his daughter. But the human organism was his life's work. He unabashedly and with pedantic logic instructed his daughter that sexuality is a natural, fundamental and pervasive element of the human condition. When Nightingale asked him about the feelings that arose in her young body he responded with gentle and straightforward explanation. He also made sure she knew that she could gratify herself as her needs dictated and do so in the knowledge that orgasmic pleasure is as natural as eating and breathing. There was no moral element, her father taught, but there was much misguided and ignorant reaction. Dr. Synge also taught that pleasuring oneself is a private matter and sexual activity in the presence of others not participating might cause embarrassment or misguided indignation so it should be practiced with discretion and consideration.

She gratified herself at work by a combination of discreet physical contact with both the men and women who came under her warm and tender care.

In the privacy of her bath, or alone on ward duty at night, or yet again in bed Miss Synge brought herself off with exquisite, smashing orgasms, writhing about, gasps, shudders, thrusts and jerks seized her as she came again and again; her nipples tingling from the twisting and pinching she gave them. Sweat flowed down her cleavage and made a wet sop in her armpits. She kept toweling and a rubber pad on hand to put under her bottom so that the ooze of her sex would not stain or puddle on the furniture or the bed as it leaked from the furnace of soft flesh between her thighs. She knew she was addicted to masturbation but neither could or would stop; any notion of compulsive behavior never crossed her mind.

Miss Nightingale tended her patients with tenderness but with a façade of clinical detachment and efficiency. Her ministrations were about them, not about her was a constant she reminded herself every day. She bathed them and assisted with bedpans, wiping and such; all of the many ways a caregiver has physical contact with the patient. There was always a perfunctory caress, a touch, a pat of understanding, a dalliance of fingers upon this place, a drawing of fingers across that part, a bit of touching quite incidental to laving the genitalia; keen attendance to the scrotum and penis; drawing back of foreskin to carefully clean away the deposits that might otherwise gather behind the glans and lead to inflammation. She did not discriminate for sex or age and gave the same warm care to all of her charges.

If a male patient experienced tumescence while she soaped and richly lathered his scrotum and penis and obviously took sexual pleasure from her ministrations that was natural physiology and there was nothing more to it. Similarly if a female patient welcomed the pleasurable diversion and release that matched that boiling but hidden behind Gale's devoted nurse persona then it was simply fulfillment of a patient's needs, not so different than assisting with urination or defecation. And if her warm and tender care left Miss Synge's own sex oozing coital fluids with swollen labia and distended lips; with clitoris engorged and distended, that too was natural and inevitable physiological response; that there was intense pleasure associated with it was to be viewed as a blessing rather than an impediment to virtue; simply an ancillary byproduct of intense devotion to care of afflicted bodies.

Her heart went out to every patient she tended, man or woman, of all ages and conditions. She prayed with them and she prayed earnestly for them. She often sat with one or another for a bit as duty allowed and read from the bible or some religious tract.

Ms Nightingale was just "Gale" in daily conversation, or "Nurse Gale" or "Sister" on duty and only used the unusual given name if circumstances called for it. Her mother had named her, not after the nurse of the Crimean War, but after the bird; however apt her allusive given name turned out to be considering her chosen life's work.

Time passed until Nightingale, in 1915, at the age of 50, took a position, when he practically demanded that she do so, in the practice of Dr. H. Martin Wold-Fletcher, of long professional acquaintance, and considerable reputation, who had established what was for the time a relatively new and narrowly focused specialty, limiting his practice to genito-urological medicine and surgery.

In this way she came to meet the patient who would prove pivotal in her life; the unfortunate young man whose affliction set her on the path of what she would come to understand was meant to be her true calling in life. All that had gone before was prelude. Nightingale would experience an epiphany that came to her while she comforted the afflicted young Mr. Wilson; her heart overflowing with compassion and great concern about his very personal and private dilemma. She would do more than comfort him.

Gregory Wilson was a casualty of the Great War. He was not merely a casualty but also something of a medical miracle. He had been severely wounded by an exploding shell. Somehow fate intervened so that he was not relegated to a place among those so badly wounded they were left to die untreated. More than once as he lay abed, full of stitches, drain tubing, and intravenous fluids, swathed in bandages, the pain made him wish he had been left in the "waiting to die" group.

The field surgeons and medical staff that undertook to repair him, perhaps guided by an unseen hand, performed heroically and the handsome young man recovered; although he walked with a limp, his legs no longer being of equal length.

Most regrettably Captain Wilson's wounds extended to his genitalia and shrapnel fragments had lacerated his groin. As a dreadful outcome of these wounds, at the age of 23, Gregory was left impotent but with an otherwise intact penis (only a few small scars where bits of shrapnel had been removed) and one testicle, the other buried somewhere in the soil of the Meuse Argonne in France.

The cruelty of his inability to achieve an erection was that his male parts continued to make testosterone. His remaining testicle continued to produce sperm and the remaining part of his prostate gland and other male bits continued to make the fluids that mixed to produce seminal ejaculate at orgasm. Bitterly he remained impotent but virile and desperately hopeful that somehow he might regain sufficient tumescence to plumb the depths of a hot, wet and receptive vagina.

Although he was a captain, a decorated hero, and an effective and stalwart leader of troops in the most gruesome combat, Gregory Wilson was still a virgin. His regiment had been called up when he was just a few days past his 20th birthday and before that he had been in school, then training. There had simply been no good opportunity; a circumstance not improved by the stalwart Captain's innate shyness.