"A Stern Task For Stern Women." This handbill was created to garner support for a community response to the influenza epidemic. It was signed by Lillian D. Wald, Chairman of the Nurses' Emergency Council.

The text of the handbill reads as follows:

A Stern Task for Stern Women

There is nothing in the epidemic of SPANISH INFLUENZA to inspire panic.

There is everything to inspire coolness and courage and sacrifice on the part of American women.

A stern task confronts our women--not only trained women, but untrained women.

The housewife, the dietitian, the nurses' aide, the practical nurse, the undergraduate nurse and the trained nurse herself--all of these are needed.

Humanity calls them

Lives depend upon their answer

Capable, though untrained hands, can lighten the burden of the trained ones. There are many things intelligent women can do to relieve the situation, working under the direction of competent nurses.

Will you help do some of them?

Will you enroll for service Now?

If possibly, apply personally at the New York Country Chapter of the American Red Cross, 389 Fifth Avenue. Come prepared to fill out an enrollment blank like that printed below. To physicians and to the nurse-employing public this appeal is made:

Unless it means life or death, please release for service all nurses attending chronic cases. Physicians should not employ nurses as office or laboratory assistants during this emergency.

Nurses' Emergency Council,

Lillian D. Wald, Chariman

Courtesy of the New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division.