Among the People of Brazil
LAST year a party of nearly twenty missionary recruits went to Brazil. The first few months were spent in language study. They settled on a little farm where part of their time could be profitably spent raising vegetables, etc., at the same time getting needed physical exercise. Following a general meeting in tents, the workers separated to their different fields of labor. In connection with the services in a fifty-foot tent each week, something quite unique in Brazil, one of the speakers gave a health talk. One of the nurses, Miss Louise V. Wurts, in reporting the health phase of their work, writes:— “Miss Corinne Hoy and I demonstrated from the platform many helpful treatments in hydrotherapy, and we have had one evening given up to healthful cookery. The people have shown a remarkable interest. They say that never was such a thing before seen in Brazil. The tent was more than full for a month. Miss Hoy and I are now kept busy with the medical work, although neither of us cared to devote our time to it. The necessity of the people touched our hearts, and we soon were forced to open a clinic or turn the sick ones away. “After the conference was over, we took the dining tent and fitted it up for our consultations and treatments. More than one hundred persons have been relieved of suffering in two months. Many have been instructed in the laws of health, and at least thirty out-patients have received complete and speedy recovery in answer to the prayer of faith and by rational treatment. Among them were cases of fever, poisoning, accident, and one of spastic paralysis. “We rejoice that the medical work has cost the conference nothing for supplies or running expenses; but with the materials which our kind friends from the States supplied us, and the donations from the grateful recipients of its benefits, it has been self-supporting. “Our case of paralysis was caused by a fall. A little Negro of seven years had been suffering for eleven days. The eliminative organs of the body had ceased to functionate, and he probably would have soon died of auto-intoxication. The doctors here had done nothing for him. We went to work on the poor little fellow, with massage and fomentations. I prayed in Portuguese, although I had been here only three months, but God heard those prayers of faith. “In a very short time the little body began to respond to treatment. Life and activity returned, and in three weeks the lad was carried to the health meeting, and walked up to the platform, where we demonstrated to the audience what the rational methods of treatment, under the blessing of God, will do. “The neighbors looked in at the windows and saw us using the hot and cold water. They said to the mother, after we had gone away, ‘He will die with that treatment.’ But she replied, ‘He will die without it.’ When the boy began to walk, I asked what the neighbors were saying now, and the reply was, ‘They have nothing to say.’ “The people where we are laboring fear to put water on their bodies, especially in sickness; but notwithstanding this, they have been ready to do everything we have told them, after seeing the marvelous cures that God has wrought. “I am sending with this a picture of the paralyzed boy, with our tent clinic in the background. “Twenty candidates were baptized yesterday, as truly converted and as stanch people as can be found anywhere. Our hearts rejoice and go out in humble praise to Him who knows how to glorify his great name.”