ceded to the group control over all nurses, hundreds of them, who worked for the city. He seized—in violation of the city charter—the city’s $100,000 emergency fund and another $25,000 from a war emergency fund and used the money to supply emergency hospitals and hire physicians, paying them double what the Public Health Service was offering. He sent those physicians to every police station in South Philadelphia, the hardest-hit section. He wired the army and navy asking that no Philadelphia physicians be drafted until the epidemic abated, and that those who had already been drafted but had
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