NOTES FROM THE DIARY OF A MEDICAL MISSIONARY.
By Mary Pierson Eddy
The life of a medical missionary presents many varied and interesting phases, writes Mary Pierson Eddy, M.D., from Deirut, Syria, to the Missionary Review. The first week of stay in a village is pretty well occupied with tending to patients; still one can take time to return the salaams of one who comes to pay merely a formal visit. But the next week the patients swarm in from all the neighboring villages, and if the stay is prolonged over a fortnight, patients travel three, four, and five days’ journey for consultation; they encamp on walls, steps, porch, and roof, so that you are a prisoner in your own house. It is necessary to move on to other places, but it is heart-rending to leave such numbers needing help behind. One of the last days of my stay in Keffeir, a village on the slope of Mount Hermon, a poor leper came from a distant village, and hearing that I would receive no new patients before leaving, was in despair. He saw the throng at the door, and knew that waiting would be of no avail. He was the local versifier or poet improvisator of his district, so he went to the teacher in the place and said, “Get pen and ink quickly.” The teacher did so. “Now,” he said, “paper, for I’m in haste.” He then improvised a poem in Arabic, a really remarkable production, in which he first extols my skill and wisdom, then draws on his imagination regarding a conversation in which my father tells me in starting out upon my life-work to regard the poor, the weakest, the most needy. He then relates his case, and describes the long years of his misery, and point by point makes his case to resemble those for whom my father desired me especially to labor. The poem ends with the full name and home address of the poet patient. Armed with this precious document and a long reed, he painfully toils up the hill once more. The tip of the reed is slit, the fluttering document is slipped into it and hoisted to the window. I was operating at the time, but one of my assistants was attracted by the paper and the hubbub under the casement, and finally the poor fellow was allowed to enter. One learns something in such a life of how Christ needed to go apart for rest and prayer. Sometimes after a meal I could not get across the hall to my own room for a few moments’ rest before resuming work. I would be obliged to go outside of the house, climb over two roofs, let myself down onto some steps, and enter my room through the window. The evening gatherings in every place are largely attended, from 60 to 300 persons usually coming together. We choose a large house, but usually have to adjourn first to the front steps, then to the porch, front yard, the village winepress, or the village church, as our numbers nightly increase. One night, when our congregation had been densely packed in the hall, we lifted a corner of the rug to close the door, and saw an immense scorpion in hiding there. What a providence that no one had been bitten! At another meeting, held in the cool evening breeze on Hermon, the gray-beard of the village was present, and another of the audience was a baby boy eighteen days old. At another time the village priest was making us a call, and a fine young fellow who had bought 24 mules to take down to Egypt to sell came in to receive a parting blessing, to insure quick and profitable sales. All my other traveling experiences are as nothing compared to crossing unknown rivers at uncertain fords. Usually in August the largest rivers are fordable, but high up in the mountains an earthquake caused a landslide last summer which demolished several houses and killed several villagers. In the early spring even the smallest streams are swollen with rapidly melted snow, and my assistant, who braves everything on land, often stands appalled at the brink where the flood rolls swiftly before her over the large, smooth, treacherous stones of the brook. Sometimes I am obliged to hold my clinics in the village church, and it can not be very reassuring to the patients to recount their ills and ailments while the village bier affords them a temporary seat. During the evening meeting in one of my stopping-places, the bier was the favorite seat of the smallest children, who were lost in the crowds on the crowded church floor. The fierce, warlike Ansairy people have recently for the first time furnished me patients, and I am hoping on my next trip to visit one of their villages if the country is safe enough. I am leaving home this week for a trip northward, and expect to visit a tribe of Turcomans who have been encamping in the plain of the Bukâa; they are clothed in sheepskins, men and women.