AGAIN and again our hearts have filled with gratitude and praise to God for the rare privilege of being connected with the Washington Sanitarium Dispensary; and it affords us pleasure to express our appreciation for these golden opportunities.
We feel that God is with us in this work. From the first, his blessing has attended our efforts, not only in helping the people physically, but also in finding a way into their homes and hearts. We feel that we are obeying Christ's command when he said, "Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind."
The first week eleven treatments were given during the hour and a half devoted each day to clinic. The fifth week one hundred treatments were given. So the work has been steadily growing. At the close of the second month nearly three hundred patients had been prescribed for, and over six hundred treatments had been given during the clinic hour.
SCENE IN A WASHINGTON ALLEY
BABY BORN IN ALLEY, AND SAVED BY DISPENSARY
We feel that we are receiving an invaluable experience in this work. We are learning in a very practical way how to perform minor surgical operations, how to dress burns, and how to treat infected, lacerated, and contused wounds, besides caring for acute and chronic diseases. Many of those who come to us are affected with loathsome diseases, which testify to a life of sin. We believe that even some of these, by disinterested kindness, will come to know the power of the gospel. One old colored woman has been coming since we first started, to have a suppurating ulcer on each foot treated. They are of about three years' standing. After a few weeks' treatment, one ulcer was healed, and the other is much better. It is needless to say that she is grateful, and is expressing her gratitude by telling her friends and acquaintances of the "new dispensary," and urging them to come.
Each nurse connected with the dispensary spends several hours each day in visiting from home to home, caring for those who are unable to come to the dispensary. It is in this work that we have some of our richest experiences. Our hearts are often made sad as we enter the abodes of misery and poverty. No attempt is made to conceal vice. Sin, as a monster, walks about unclothed and unrestrained. Drunkenness and immorality are sapping physical and moral strength. I have often felt when reading descriptions of slum life that they must have been exaggerated; but now I wonder if the conditions were not understated.
As from day to day I hear the story of the ruined life,—the temptation, the fall, then hopelessness and despair,—I am led to seek wisdom to know how to reach these poor unfortunate suffering ones.
Some time ago as we were leaving one home, we were called across the street to see a sick woman. When we entered the house, she said that for weeks she had been hoping to see us. Tears of joy flowed down her cheeks, for she knew that her hope had been realized. She is happy now, for three times a week she can have a bath and treatment. She is a paralytic, and has been helpless for three years. With almost no care, imagine her condition when we first saw her, and what it must have meant to give the first treatment. The Lord has wonderfully blessed our feeble efforts. As the result of a few weeks' treatment, she is able to dress herself and stand alone.
In another home we found the mother confined to her bed. A year had passed since she had left it. She was a loathsome sight. On her body were no less than a dozen putrefying sores. Only ten days after we began treatment, she was able to sit up in a chair out-of-doors. Little more than two weeks had passed when she was able to walk about her room. This seems marvelous, but the great Healer is as powerful to-day as when he healed in Galilee. We have had the privilege of reading and praying with her. Her children gathered about her bed, and the tears flowed freely as they exclaimed, "Ain't that nice, mama! Nobody ever done this before!" True, they had seen visiting nurses before; but never one who would kneel down at the bedside and beseech the aid of the Great Physician.
As we were visiting from home to home, a woman asked if we would go to see a poor old colored woman who was very sick. After following her for several blocks, we entered the home of the sick one. We were led to the back part of the house, and then up a dark, narrow stairway into the sick-room. There sat the old gray-haired woman in a rocking chair. Though an expression of peace rested upon her countenance, the traces of suffering were not absent. For weeks she had been sitting on the edge of the old rocker, her body being so badly swollen from dropsy that she could not sit back in it. Her shattered nerves were about to give way under the15strain through which she was passing. For weeks she had not reclined on her bed, for in so doing it would cost her life. Her body was swollen from her feet to above her waist from the infiltration of fluid into the tissues and cavities. A few days later the tissues broke down under this great pressure, and the fluids oozed out, so much so that her feet were constantly in pools of water. Imagine the odor! The flies having full sway, every morning when we came to treat her we found her covered with maggots. Sick and suffering, she sat alone during the long days, except for a little grandson, who was occasionally in and out of the house. She had one daughter, a wild, reckless girl, who found no joy and felt no responsibility in the care of the mother. The daughter worked in a laundry during the day, and ran the streets till late at night. She provided almost no food for her son and mother; and when neighbors sent food by the boy to the sick one, she seldom received it. And could you censure the child when he, too, was suffering for want of bread? Do we wonder that these unfortunate children grow up to be thieves, when their parents have them to steal or starve? In spite of all this, the old woman seemed cheerful; she was looking forward to the time when her suffering would be over. Never did we leave the house without her blessing being invoked from heaven upon us.
In the visiting nurses' work during the past two months, four hundred treatments have been given; one hundred fifty wounds have been dressed; two hundred seventy-five papers and magazines have been given away.
The dispensary offers an excellent experience in obstetrical work. In the city of Washington hundreds of children are born into the world without the aid of a physician, because the parents are unable to meet the expense. Already we have taken charge of about fifteen cases. All have been pleased with the care they have received, and are making an effort to advertise our work. In a few months we shall have all that we can do in this line.
Our returned missionaries and others who know the needs of the foreign fields and of the great cities, tell us that this institution is furnishing just the experience which the students of the Foreign Mission Seminary need to make them all-round missionaries.
MRS. V. E. PEUGH.
PATIENT WHOSE BODY IS COVERED WITH SUPPURATING SORES
