p. 16 | What a Nurse Might Do by A. W. Spaulding

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 23, 1911

What a Nurse Might Do

By A. W. Spaulding

“Of what use could you be in a work like this?” I should like to take you with me for a little trip around the country, and let you see conditions; this would answer your question. I should like to have you see, just over the hill from us, the windowless, mud-daubed log cabin, 12 x 14 feet, filled at one end with two beds, and at the other with the wide fireplace, over which the cooking is done. Take dinner with me there, and you will see, the iron pot swung over the fire with a mixture of cow-peas, pork, and lard. This is the main dish. To support it, the bake-kettle is brought out, a few coals are raked out on the hearth, upon which the kettle is set; then the woman brings in her hands two cakes of corn-meal dough (meal, water, and salt), and throws them into the pan, covers it up, and heaps coals over it, and soon dinner is ready. Possibly, as a luxury, you are offered coffee, or sorghum, often in milk.

In this little cabin there are four children, though in many such there are six or more. There is no privacy, unless it be behind the wide-open door. Under the cabin the chickens sleep; six feet away is the pigsty; for it does not pay to walk too far to throw the slops. There are no outbuildings, except a pole shed for the cow and the mule. The children are usually thinly clothed. At one such neighbor’s, where I called to invite them to our Thanksgiving social, the mother said, “We’d be right glad to come, but my little children hadn’t got no shoes yet.” It was cold. They crowded in behind her as she opened the door, all except one barefooted, pinched-faced little fellow, who was bravely chopping at some poles for the fire.

One such cabin my wife visited to attend a new-born baby. The little thing caught cold in a week or so; they dosed it, and then sent for Mrs. Spaulding. She and the girls stayed there several nights, and treated it; but in their absence there were plenty of advisers to recommend various things for the cure of the baby. “Just stuff it,” said one; “stuff it with a spoon; ’tain’t no matter what ye stuff it with; that’s the way to cure them fits.” Mrs. Spaulding saved it from one dollar-bottle of dope, and brought it out of spasms with a warm bath. She recommended the warm baths, and the people were grateful, but in her absence they would not bathe it. Not they! “Ony [the husband] wouldn’t hear to it.” For ten days they did not send for the teacher, for fear she would treat it some more; and she, overbusied with the work of the school, could not get away except on emergency calls; besides, the baby was reported to be doing well. What do you think they did to cure the baby?—They followed a famous prescription, which is reputed to have saved the life of many a child here in the mountains. They took the little two-weeks-old baby, turned it on its stomach, pinched up a thumb-and-finger-ful of skin, jabbed it with a penknife, and squeezed out a little blood. When the first operation did not have the desired effect (curing pneumonia), they did it a second time, and then a third time. They told of this later. It had cured little Ted Myers of colic one time; why shouldn’t it cure pneumonia? The baby died.

I have given but a little picture. It is true that there is another side. Many of our neighbors are of a higher type, neat and orderly in their persons and premises. We have some of as fine culture as any of our friends in the North, perhaps finer. But here is a great field of need, reaching to our very doors, and growing worse the farther one goes back in the mountains. We have done what we could, or what we thought we could; but we need nurses to help us. We should have now one or two visiting nurses, who can lead our students in helping the people, and who can instruct the people privately, and perhaps later in groups. If we could have a nurse to start, or rather develop and systematize this work, we would make strenuous efforts to get a modest treatment-room.

In “Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VII, pages 56, 57, 61, we read: “I have a message to bear in regard to the Southern field. We have a great work to do in this field. Its condition is a condemnation of our professed Christianity. Look at its destitution of ministers, of teachers, and medical missionaries. Consider the ignorance, the poverty, the misery, the distress, of many of the people. And yet this field lies close at our doors. How selfish, how inattentive, we have been to our neighbors! We have heartlessly passed them by, doing little to relieve their sufferings.” “Brethren, take hold of this work. Give no place to discouragement. Do not criticize those who are trying to do something in right lines, but go to work yourselves.” “In this work, it is best to make small beginnings in many places, and allow God’s providence to indicate how rapidly facilities should be increased. The small plants established will grow into larger institutions. There will be a distribution of responsibilities, and workers will thus gradually acquire greater mental and spiritual power.”

A. W. SPAULDING.