The Feast of Mother Cabrini

About noon on March 14, 1921, Peter Smith was born in the Columbus Hospital Extension in New York. As a matter of routine the nurse put a solution of nitrate of silver into the child's eyes. She was in a hurry at the time. When she put down the bottle she stared at it, dumbfounded with dismay. She saw that she had used a fifty percent solution instead of a one percent solution, and she knew that that meant the baby's eyes had been destroyed.

Desperately she tried to wipe the solution away, but it was no use. The damage had been done. Without waiting to lay the child in its crib she rushed with it in her arms to the nun in charge of the floor. "Sister, Sister!" she screamed. "Come and do something. I've done a dreadeful thing. Get a doctor."

Two doctors were brought. They looked at the child's eyes, and they looked at the bottle of solution. It was as the nurse had said. She had stayed around hoping that there was some mistake in the labelling of the bottle, that it might not be as bad as she thought. When she saw their faces, she collapsed weeping hysterically.

An eye specialist was sent for. He of course agreed with the other doctors.

"The cornea has gone," he pronounced briefly. "Nobody can do anything."

The Superior hurried in. She thought that there was something that might be done after all. With her she brought the relic of Mother Cabrini and put it to little Peter's eyes before pinning it to his nightgown.

That night she and the Sisters spent the entire night in prayer in the chapel. The nurse had already gone there and was begging frantically, "Please Lord, please Lord! Don't let that baby get blind. Mother Cabrini, won't you work a miracle!" She was not thinking of herself. She took it for granted that she would be discharged for gross negligence. But that poor baby, to have this happen to him almost the moment he was born!

The next morning the doctors came again. One of them swung toward the other after he had bent down to the baby and asked his colleague, "Am I seeing things?"

The other doctor bent down and looked into Peter's eyes with a light. "No, you are not seeing things; bue he is. Those eyes are intact and perfectly normal."

In this case, a second miracle occurred immediately. The very next day Peter Smith got double pneumonia. His temperature was taken; it was a hundred and eight.

The Sisters sent for the doctors again. "Well," they said, "a degree less than that is invariably fatal." One of them turned to the Superior, and said, "Mother, you'l have to do some more praying. Even though those burns have not harmed the baby, this fever will burn him to death."

"Doctor," she returned. "Mother Cabrini has not cured his eyes just to let him die of pneumonia."

They prayed again, thankful for the first miracle, which has spared their hospital from scandal, but pleading for a second. By morning all symptoms of the pneumonia had gone. When the doctors came one said, "I never knew of such a thing. Why, that child is perfectly all right. Not a trace of a high temperature!"

"Look how he's sleeping," said the other. "Mother, your Mother Cabrini can certainly do extraordinary things."

Ten days after his birth, Peter Smith went home with his mother. Today a soldier in the army, all that he has to show for his mishap are two small scars caused by the silver nitrate as it ran down from his eyes.