Chapter 5

"'It's too late to help this now, but ef yo' all will just see that there's a school here where my children can learn what their pa an' me an' Jim didn't know, an' will keep the meetin's agoin' at the schoolhouse so they'll know how to be good, I'll be mighty glad. These here little fellers named Jim an' Andy, too, yo' know, an' I want 'em to hev more of a chanct than we've hed. They's lots of us up here thet hed in us a great big feelin' of wantin' to be somethin' and to do some-thin' that we didn't know what nor how, 'n' I guess we get reckless sometimes thinkin' it's no use.'" [Footnote: Alma C. Moore--Christian Women's Board of Missions.]

* * * * *

The detailed and comprehensive report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, issued in January, 1915, emphasized the desirability of the attendance of Indian children at near-by public schools, to obviate the dreaded separation from parents which is entailed when they must be sent by the government to distant Indian boarding schools.

The report mentions the gratifying increase last year in the number of Indian children in attendance at the neighborhood public schools.

Some tribes are still peculiarly neglected educationally. The Navajos are a conspicuous example.

Twenty-four thousand Indian children remain without schools.

The religious motive enters deeply into the psychology of the Indian, and no greater stimulus toward better living can be given them than Christianity affords. Therefore the Mission School is especially adopted to bring the Indians into helpful and constructive relationships as individuals and citizens.

Of great significance in the uplift of the Indians is the recent opening of several schools for training young Christian Indians for leadership in Christian work among their own people.

* * * * *

"The transition which is now going on from the old days of hunting and fishing to the new period of commercial development throughout all Southeastern Alaska must have a profound effect upon the future of this people.

"More pupils applied for admission to the Sheldon Jackson School at Sitka this year than could possibly be accommodated. The industrial departments of this institution have received careful attention. The general claim of all this work is to give full practical and theoretical training, with a view to preparing the girls for the task of home-making and the boys as wage earners." [Footnote: Woman's Board of Home Missions, Presbyterian Church in U.S.A.]

This aim holds true also for the schools of all Protestant Missions in the far North.

Education is one of the expressions of the passionate desire and purpose for betterment of those who gave their impress to our national life. Hamilton Mabie says: "Among Americans education is not only a discipline, a training; it is also a symbol. It means living an ampler life in a larger world."

The church-Home Missions--from the beginning has been the largest factor in the spread of schools and colleges--the greatest single educative force of this country.

The record of the Home Mission activities of the various denominations tells the story of the founding of academies and colleges, throughout the length and breadth of the land. In Kansas the State Normal School, State Agricultural College and the State University were founded by Home Missionaries.

Of the great Eastern universities and colleges it will be recalled that many were established by the Christian church. Among these are Harvard, Williams, Columbia, Princeton, Rutgers, Vassar and many others.

Home Missions is still an active and deeply needed educative force. It brings the most powerful influence to the great groups of the neglected in our land, giving them visions of bettered physical conditions, yearnings after higher spiritual purposes, and determinations for a fuller realization of life in all its meaning, with the power of attaining these ideals.

IV

A HEALING FORCE

"During the spring months an epidemic of diphtheria and other infectious diseases visited a district of nine or ten villages in New Mexico. Many children succumbed to these diseases, the number of those who died being about one-tenth of the entire population of the district.

"No people in the world are kinder-hearted than the Mexican people. Everybody, even the children, visits the sick, and attends the _velorios_ (wakes) and funeral rites of the dead, without regard to the contagious character of the disease.

"This fatal custom is re-enforced by a fatalistic philosophy. Whatever befalls one, he receives it with an '_Asi me toco_' (It was my fate). Whatever comes, he says:

"'_Es par Dios_' (It is of God). Each man has his appointed time to die. Until that time he is safe, and when that time comes nothing can save him. There is no such thing as contagion; disease strikes when and where God will. Medicine will cure, if it is the will of God. What the medicine may be is of little importance; a glass of water will cure as well as anything else, is a frequent saying, if it is the will of God.

"She, the missionary nurse, thereupon took up her station in the sick room, kept out the numerous callers, administered antitoxin, and nursed the child back to life. She had saved the child. She gave the antitoxin treatment in other cases where the parents were willing. She thus treated fifteen cases, losing only one."

* * * * *

"The healing of the seamless dress, Is by our beds of pain. We touch Him in life's throng and press, And we are whole again."

* * * * *

Of all the compelling qualities that drew humanity irresistibly to Him, the compassion of the Christ was the most winning. This constraining love was the very heart of His Gospel.

The masses of the suffering in His day knew only the ostracism of society because of their affliction.

The blind must sit idly through the glory of the day by the dusty road-side, begging bread from the passing throng; the crippled lay in their misery and impotence at the gateways of the temples, sustained by the occasional coins tossed by the more fortunate as they hurried by. Nervous and mental sufferers must range through the wilds of deserts and waste places, or share the tombs where the lepers took refuge, being judged possessed of devils and fit only to be outcasts.

The pity of Christ, as well as His power to heal, disclosed a new force in the world-a love that could tenderly share the darkened outlook as well as minister to all the needs of such as these.

The compassion of the Christ reached and lifted the hopeless heart of suffering humanity as His touch soothed the torturing agony of disease and brought hope and healing into a world hardened to pain.

It released a power the beneficence and helpfulness of which increase year by year as science adds to its ability, and a growing sense of responsibility widens its use.

The Christian era ushered in the day of hope for the sick-poor--a day that has progressed steadily, to an ever-enlarging vision of what was in the heart of Christ for the healing of the nations.

Ancient writers tell us of some efforts in pre-Christian days toward the institutional care of the sick. The earliest records mention the treatment of the sick in the Greek temples of Aesculapius in 1134 B.C.; these were probably not for the poor. Seneca very much later refers to the infirmaries established by the Romans for the well-to-do classes.

In 226 B.C., the Buddhists in India are credited with some small efforts to provide for the sick poor, as are also later the fire worshipers of Persia.

"When the example and teachings of Christ began to bear fruit, and when Jerusalem and the roads approaching it began to be crowded with pilgrims, special accommodations for the use of the sick were established. When monasteries and convents followed, they too, provided for the sick."

From the Roman word "hospitalia" (apartment set apart for guests), our word hospital is derived.

In the writings of St. Jerome, who established several, the word "hospital" is first used for a curative institution.

It is of interest to know that the oldest hospital now in use in Europe, the Hotel Dieu, was founded in Paris, in 600 A. D. by the Bishop of Paris.

All the early hospitals were church institutions, and the wards were clustered about the chapel, as may be seen to-day in the arrangement of beautiful St. Luke's hospital in New York City. Thus we find that religion, not medicine, gave birth to hospitals.

An accelerating influence in their growth came through the necessities of war, which threw large numbers of the injured and suffering upon communities quite unprepared to receive and minister to them.

It was to meet such a need that the first hospital was established in the United States on Manhattan Island in 1658.

The "New Netherland Register" says "This hospital was established at the request of Surgeon Hendricksen Varrevauger for the reception of sick soldiers--who had been previously billeted on private families."

In 1679 the hospital consisted of five houses.

Early in the eighteenth century pest-houses were established at Salem, Massachusetts, at New York, and Charleston, and in 1717, a hospital for contagious diseases was built in Boston.

The teachings and writings of Benjamin Franklin were of marked importance in promoting sanitary science and in securing the building of the first chartered hospital in the United States, which was erected in Philadelphia in 1755. The record shows four hundred and thirty-five patients treated in this hospital in the year 1775.

That year was also marked by the building of the New York Hospital, which was destroyed by fire almost as soon as completed, and rebuilt in 1791. It owed its origin to two professors of King's College (now Columbia), which at that time was a church institution.

The necessities of war have from early times had a marked effect upon the development of hospitals. Dr. James Tilton, in presenting recommendations to Congress in 1781, says of his experience in the Revolution: "It would be shocking to humanity to relate the history of our general hospitals in the years 1777 and 1779, when they swallowed up at least one-half of our army, owing to the system of placing nearly all the sick of the army in the general hospitals, where crowds and infection wrought a fearful mortality, and where more surgeons died in the American service in proportion to their number than officers of the line--a strong evidence that infection is more dangerous than weapons of war."

The death rate of the English and French soldiers was so fearful, and the neglect and condition of the wounded men so appalling in the Crimean war (1854), that the entire English nation was aroused. It was a woman, Florence Nightingale, who was sent out by the nation and given full authority to act in the emergency upon which hung the fate of the armies.

Not only did this noble woman, with her band of thirty-seven nurses, bring healing instead of death in those army hospitals, but she instituted reform in sanitation which was adopted by hospitals throughout the world.

To her also humanity owes the inestimable boon of the trained nurse of education, refinement and ability. Before Florence Nightingale gave herself and initiated the movement for the training of young women of standing as nurses, such work had been left to the rough, uncouth, and often low-lived men and women, of whom the unspeakable Sairey Gamp, immortalized by Charles Dickens, is a fitting type.

As the Christian church was the first to give healing to the needy, so it has carried this ministry wherever in the world its banners have been set up.

Throughout this land, from Alaska to the Gulf, may be found hospitals established by the Christian church--the greater number the product of Home Missions.

The Home Mission nurse, or deaconess-nurse, is an important factor in connection with nearly every mission station.

In lumber sections, in mining camps, on Alaskan river boats, in far back mountain settlements, in the patios of Porto Rico and our island possessions, with the Negroes of the South, the Orientals of the Pacific coast, the backward peoples, the Mexicans and Indians, the depressed of our great cities, at the gates of the nation--wherever the cry of human need in our land has been met by Home Missions, there these ministers of healing have carried their blessed service.

If the nurse, or deaconess, is to fulfill her mission to the sick, she must have training. There must be deaconess homes and hospital's for this, where also the sick poor who can rarely be properly cared for in their dark, crowded, unsanitary homes may find help. In answer to this double need, deaconess hospitals have been established.

"The deaconess nurse goes into the homes of the poor, bringing the skilled touch of the nurse and the loving heart of Christian womanhood to the service of the neediest. Contagion has no terrors for her; Filth, vermin, and dangerously unsanitary conditions are matters of every-day occurrence. No service so quickly opens the heart to good influences as that which comes in hours of deepest need and helplessness, to lead the heart through human tenderness to the Source of all goodness and love. Whole families have been won to Christ through the services of a Christian nurse.

* * * * *

"Babies first! The wee folk, doomed to the ill's to which tenement life is heir, must have safe food; a luxury unattainable, or it would be if the House did not have a dispensary from which over a thousand bottles of milk, modified by the doctor's prescription for each individual case, are given out each month.

"It is worth while to visit the Medical Mission at 36 Hull Street, Boston. There will be found a dental clinic, opened in the spring of 1912, and the school nurses send the children there to get acquainted with the pleasures of the dental chair, and, most important of all, to learn how to care for their teeth. Then there are the orthopedic, and the regular surgical and medical clinics.

"Soon after lunch I went with a nurse to make call's on a few of the out-patients. We read of dark stairways, but I had no conception of such dark and crooked ways. Why the children do not have broken limbs all the time I cannot imagine.

"We entered three places--I suppose the people who live in them call them homes; each has two or three rooms, with one or more beds in every room, even the kitchen. If there were three rooms, one was window-less. A mother, with a three weeks' old baby, was scrubbing the stone steps. The babies were bound up like papooses, and the nurse had to unwind the little living mummies to care for them.

"Later, returning to the Mission, we attended the 'Italian Mothers' Club.' How they luxuriate in their weekly treat! They sing, sew on garments which are theirs when completed, listen to talks from visitors and workers, and always close the hour with the Lord's prayer. Children cling to their skirts or lie in their laps as they discuss their personal problems, and all look up when spoken to with the never-failing Italian courtesy.

"Some of the year's statistics are a revelation as to the work done: Dispensary treatments, indoor, 12,522; outdoor, 1536; new patients, 4649; operations, 329; obstetrical cases, 151; calls made by nurses, 3075.

"In one week at the morning and evening clinics, ninety-seven patients were treated at the dispensary besides the vaccination cases." [Footnote: Woman's Home Missionary Society, Methodist Episcopal Church.]

* * * * *

"She was an epileptic. The sadness that is bound up in the word only those who have experienced it can know. She worked with her needle as long as she could. At the warning cry of one of the terrible attacks, her mother tenderly cared for her.

"'There is only one thing that rests on my heart,' said the mother, as she lay on her death-bed. 'I am satisfied about everything else and ready to go, if only there was some friend to care for my poor epileptic girl.'

"A friend promised to place the daughter in the Lutheran Home for Epileptics, and the mother died praising God for those who, in following His Son, had provided for those who were afflicted." [Footnote: The Women's Missionary Society, Lutheran General Council.]

* * * * *

Nowhere is the twofold service of the Mission hospital more needed than among the Negroes of the South, where the unsanitary conditions in and about the homes, and the widespread ignorance of the simplest laws of health are so pronounced. A number of the Boards maintain hospitals providing care for the sick Negroes and the training of colored girls as nurses for their own people.

Among these MacVicar Hospital is outstanding in the character and efficiency of its service.

This hospital is a department of Spelman Seminary, maintained by the Woman's American Baptist Home Missionary Society at Atlanta, Georgia. Its workers are members of the school faculty and they are paid from the school fund. A small charge, to outside patients, is made.

The trustees have set aside one-half of the annual income of a small endowment in order to provide free operations and treatment for those to whom even a small payment is impossible.

Negro women and children from the city have the privileges of the hospital, and patients also come from various parts of the state for medical and surgical treatment.

The hospital is able to take adequate care of the health of Spelman's large family of six hundred people. When smallpox is in the city, vaccination day is held and every boarder, day pupil, teacher, and workman must report to the hospital.

The doctors from the city co-operate in the work at MacVicar, giving their services freely.

One of the most valuable features of the institution is the training course for nurses, to which those in training must give their entire time for three years. They must have completed the eighth grade in school before beginning.

* * * * *

Of those in dire need of physical as well as spiritual regeneration in our land are the Mexicans, of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, California, and the large colonies in some of the cities of Texas.

The prevailing ignorance, untidiness, and superstition of the homes call insistently for more missionary nurses to teach cleanliness, sanitation, and economy, and the training of mothers in the care of their little ones and in the preparation of wholesome food.

* * * * *

The latest report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs states that the Government maintains fifty-one hospitals (six additional are under construction), with a combined capacity of 1432 patients, to care for a population of 331,250 persons. In view of these figures, it is not difficult to realize the urgent need of the field workers and nurses in connection with Christian Missions among Indians.

The report shows also the estimated number of 21,980 Indians suffering from tuberculosis, and 35,769 afflicted with the highly contagious eye disease, trachoma. The death rate per thousand among the Indians last year was 30.76. The percentage of deaths due to tuberculosis was 31.83, while the birthrate was 38.79 per thousand.

The Commissioner of Indian Affairs says:

"I am fully aware of the fact that to perpetuate the Indian race, the inroads of tuberculosis must be stayed. To do this it is essential that better sanitary conditions be instituted in the Indian homes, and cleanliness, better ventilation, and sufficient and nourishing food be secured."

Realizing the importance of these matters, a study has been made of the physical conditions of the government Indian schools. An effort has been made to detect incipient tuberculosis and trachoma and segregate and treat those infected, so that healthy families may not be infected through the return of a child who has been infected at school. Regular talks are given to the children on sanitary matters.

There is vital necessity for more hospitals to care for the children and other members of the family in the early stages of disease.

Fully sixty per cent of the Indians under the supervision of the Indian service are still entirely dependent upon the government for medical assistance. The medical staff employed by the government comprises one hundred and twenty-eight regular physicians, devoting their entire time, and fifty-nine contract physicians giving part time service.

A unique and most helpful feature of the Indian Missions maintained by the Women's Board of Domestic Missions of the Reformed Church in America are the separate buildings known as lodges, set apart for the use of the Indians.

Here the specially needy sick find care and shelter until other provision can be made for them.

Here when the journey has been long, or necessity compels, mothers bring their little ones for rest, or to spend the night.

Young girls pressed by temptation or needing shelter can find security and safety at the lodge.

The lodge sewing machines and laundry facilities are greatly appreciated by the women who seek the help of such conveniences from time to time.

Here mothers are taught many helpful lessons in sanitation, the care of babies, and the preparation of food for the sick.

Occasionally Indian feasts and celebrations connected with the Mission are held or prepared in the lodge by the Indians themselves under the supervision of a worker.

The lodge matron knows the Indians and how to help them, and is loved and trusted by them because they realize her sympathy and appreciate what her kind hands do for them in the care of the sick, and often, also, in the preparation of their dead for burial.

Many a sick and needy one at the lodge has turned from the old Indian road of darkness, pain, and dread, and found rest, and help, and light in the Jesus Way.

* * * * *

"Here in Alaska the hospital boat was launched this summer, and will be of great use.

"One of the important results of my visit, I trust, will be a report of a medical survey made of the natives in Haines and Kluckwan. A number of estimates of the amount of tubercular and other infectious diseases among these people have been made, but, so far as my knowledge goes, no careful, exhaustive, complete medical survey of any one village has ever been made, or put into suitable form for presentation. I fear that this will disclose a most appalling condition (unless it should prove that the estimates hitherto available have been very carelessly made). Whatever it may show, I feel sure that it will help us in presenting to the United States Government the medical needs of these people in such a way as to compel the serious attention of Congress, and result in an appropriation annually for the introduction of such sanitary measures throughout Alaska as will eventually eradicate the dreadful source of contagion now existing.

"It seems almost inconceivable that while so much has been done for the Indians of the plains, for the people of the Philippine Islands and for Porto Rico, in the way of sanitation, these natives who have been wards of the nation for forty-seven years should have been almost entirely neglected in this respect. According to the information which I have, there is not a single government hospital in all Alaska, and only one hospital of any kind--our own at Haines--that is being maintained for the benefit of the natives; nor are there any homes for the aged, the incurables, or orphans, though these are sadly needed. While the church has been ministering to their spiritual needs, and the government and church together have been supplying educational facilities, all agencies have failed to meet the fundamental problem of physical regeneration.