We have seven dispensaries, three treatment rooms, a health journal, and a health food factory. Two of these dispensaries have been added to our list during the last year. One is located at Igatpuri, on the Bombay side, and the other at Jagadishpur, in the Santali area of the Bengal division. During the year, treatment rooms have been opened in Rangoon; but they have not been operating long enough to send us returns.
Our treatment rooms draw the cream of India’s population, rajas, maharajas, ranis, maharanis, barristers, physicians, and European officials from both the civil and the military ranks. Such a list of intelligent patients gives many opportunities for dropping a word here and there on present truth. Although there is not the room for the extension of these agencies that there is for dispensaries, yet we have room for several more. When we consider that they are more than self-supporting, we ought not to put anything in the way of their extension.
Our dispensaries represent an immense amount of work. During the biennial period, the returns show more than 35,000 patients, coming from 437 villages; 1,168 visits were made to the homes of the villagers; 1,092 gospel talks were given; and more than 27,000 pages of literature were distributed.
The influence of one of these dispensaries is far-reaching. Sometimes patients come distances of thirty and forty miles to one of these places for relief. Hammering away with this amount of work is sure to glean souls for God’s kingdom.
To study ways and means to discern the golden grain ready for the harvest from the vast throng that passes through our hands daily, should be the aim of all the workers. We ought to have many times the number that we have of these beacons of light. The chief drawback is a lack of facilities and workers.
I thank God for the medical work. I am grateful for the open doors it makes. I hope that the laborers engaged in this line of work will aim to keep these doors ajar, and that the gospel of Jesus may be carried within. This and only this will make us missionaries in India.
