Woman's Medical Work In Foreign Missions

Address delivered at Annual Meetings of The Women's Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, New-York, and The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, 1886.

by
MRS. LUCY S. BAINBRIDGE,
Author of Round the World Letters, etc.

Published by the
WOMEN'S BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS OF
THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,
20 NORTH WASHINGTON SQ.
NEW-YORK.

Nearly thirty years ago my mother called upon her former pastor, and he declined to receive her, for a reason which, I am sure, he would no longer consider valid. From love for the science of medicine, and from sympathy for the suffering of her own sex, she had taken a degree at a medical college, and become the president of another. "I can receive no call from a woman who has so unsexed herself," was written on her returned card at the door of this prominent clergyman.

A generation has passed, and women have won for themselves a respectable place in the medical profession, and in no department more assuredly than in the teeming world of foreign missions.

There are still, indeed, a few relies of former prejudices, who cannot endure socially the thoroughly educated and modest woman going from home to home, feeling of pulse-beats, and prescribing for mothers and children, yet who suffer no qualms of conscience in associating with the women who sing publicly in questionable attire, or give to the drawing-room a more or less pronounced air of sensuality. But almost everybody is converted to the idea of sending women physicians to the heathen.

The idea, however, is not enough. Christian people need to be enthused with a determination to carry out the idea. They should realize far more the enormous demand among hundreds of millions for female medical missionaries. A much larger measure of information is required, and perhaps I may have some to give you.

As to the women and children especially of Japan, China, Siam, India, Persia, Syria, Asia Minor, Africa, Mexico, Brazil, and other lands, there are at least six inquiries which, as educated Christian women, we should all be able to answer.

I. Have the unevangelized natives of heathen and Moslem lands a supply of physicians; and if so, of what kind?

II. How do these native physicians treat disease, and what are some of the leading principles of their general practice?

III. What is the sanitary condition of the masses of the people, and what are their special demands upon the medical work of Christian missions?

IV. Are there native asylums and hospitals?

V. Is the demand in heathen and Moslem lands for women physicians the same, or greater than in Christian lands?

VI. What are the facilities of missionary women physicians for evangelistic work?

In endeavoring to answer these inquiries, I would gladly give the names of my authorities, many of them esteemed personal friends, to whom I am much indebted, in addition to my own three years of oriental travel. But it is not well to mention them publicly in connection with any reports unfavorable to the governments and populations with which they are engaged in a life-work. Unintentional harm has often thus been done. Enemies of Christian missions are sure to make use of every straw of influence to prejudice our obtuse with those for whom we labor.

Let us land first in

JAPAN.

It is new Japan we are visiting, not old Japan of many centuries, which, strange to say, existed up to a score of years ago. The recent advance here in civilization has been bewilderingly rapid, and in the sanitary and medical sciences the improvement has been quite as marked as in politics, commerce, education, and literature. There are well-educated native physicians in many of the cities and leading towns, a few of whom are women. The old methods of practice are giving place to the new light and knowledge from America and Europe. Yet, in the rural districts, and to some extent still among the masses in the centers of population, the old customs prevail of thrusting needles into the various parts of the body, burning bamboo pith upon the surface of the skin, and the cauterizing with red-hot pieces of money, the wearing of charms and rubbing of idols in the temples. The idea of possession-by evil spirits as the cause of disease, and especially by the spirit of a fox or badger, is quite common.

There are several native training schools for nurses, and there are many asylums for the blind, and kindred institutions; indeed, to a superficial glance it would seem that Japan is not far behind some of the more backward States of America.

The sanitary condition of the people is more satisfactory than in any other country of the Orient. Cleanliness is a national virtue. Washing of the entire person is a daily custom, the homes are neatly kept, and the food is wholesome. The climate and the character of the country, together with the prevailing agricultural thrift, which utilizes all refuse for fertilization, preserve the general health, and keep the death-rate almost within the limits of our Western nations. The women are not secluded. Their dress is beautiful, and more conducive than our own style to health and vigor.

While they prefer in their own illnesses, even as women in America, the attendance of qualified physicians of their own sex, they also are ready to avail themselves of the best medical and surgical help at command.

But Japan is still a heathen country. The large proportion of even its educated people are not yet Christians. Indeed, they are worse, - they are leading the masses into infidelity and agnosticism.

The great inspiration for Christian medical work in this beautiful and interesting land is not so much the lingering devotions of many to the idols of cure, the miraculous shrines, and the temples of Buddhists and Shinto superstition, but the terrible fact that this sudden outburst of civilizing enterprise is chiefly away from all religion. The people want our medical, surgical, and all our other sciences, without our Bible, our God, our Saviour. A few thousand converts have been enrolled, but what are they, as yet, to the graduates of twenty-five thousand well-taught schools during the last decade?

The imperative duty is laid upon us, even as at home, only with added emphasis, to press forward the work of introducing the Christian element into the schools, and literature, and social life, as well as to preach the gospel and to build chapels. We should strive to give this awakening people Christian physicians. And, as at the bedside and among the friends of the suffering, there is special opportunity for evangelistic work. We must send many of our missionaries, especially our women missionaries, with the access and facilities which are given by thorough medical training.

We cross now the Yellow Sea to the vast country of

CHINA.

Here no such a thing is known as a regular medical education, but among the vast literary class every man is esteemed, more or less, a physician. Indeed, it is quite common for any man or woman who is out of employment to go to practicing medicine for a living. The great underlying Fung-shway superstition is the most convenient shelter for medical as well as priestly quacks. The vagrant classes of America who take up the profession of "tramps" in China would become doctors. Their principal qualifications are "cheek," ignorance, and a god of medicine on their idol shelf. Nevertheless, many claim to be specialists, which helps there, as often in our own land, to delude the people. Secrecy also from generation to generation as to special methods of cure is a common feature. If a doctor can advertise that his ancestors have been in the medical profession for several generations, he can claim to possess all their wisdom. I have seen pills advertised in Canton, by the great-great-great-grandson of the discoverer, as sure to give long life. The experience of the Chinese in the use of herbs, as teas, and of poultices, for so many centuries has necessarily proved of some value. I have seen the whole front of a doctor's house covered with poultices which had been used and proved effective.

There is no knowledge of surgery deserving of the name. As, for example, students are practiced at thrusting long needles at draped images of the human form, and Then they have proved able to hit all the parts with great precision, they are considered to be qualified surgeons. Thus, in the province of Quang Tung, a woman with severe headache was treated, by having a needle thrust into the interior of her ear. Of course the tympanum was destroyed. Another patient, in the province of Chili, was treated for a pain in the back. It was plain to the native surgeon that a counterirritant was necessary in front, so he thrust a needle through one of the eyes. In Shantung a cholera patient had six long needles stuck deep into each arm and leg, and into the abdomen, and two into each side of the face.

I met a woman with a pain in her chest, who had learned from her native physician that the string between her throat and her stomach had got twisted. According to their dental surgery, toothache is a worm gnawing in the tooth.

One commonly supposed efficacious treatment is to burn incense before some special medicine idol, to tickle his ears so as to waken him to the emergency of the case, and then to take some of the ashes of the burnt incense-sticks home to the sick-room. In the temples I have seen luck-boxes shaken, and the stick which falls out of their inclosed bundle tells which kind of medicine to take.

In a Chinese apothecary's shop we will find dried caterpillars and worms, shavings of deer and goat horn, pieces of the skin of the elephant and the rhinoceros, tiger's bones, dried centipedes and snake-skins.

Illness is often attributed to the agency of one of the destroying gods; which one, is decided by jugglery with shells and ancient money, and he must be appeased with gifts.

Frequently the grudge of some dead person is supposed to be the cause of disease, and paper clothing and other offerings are made to the angry spirit, while the priests are invited to the house to repeat the ritual "for untying grudges."

The Chinese use many charms to expel or to keep away evil and disease causing spirits. Old coins on a red cord are worn upon the body, or suspended from a bedcurtain. Yellow paper charms with images painted upon them are placed on the bed, or are burnt and the ashes given to the patient to drink. They are also hung at the heads of streets and in the entrance gateways of cities. Branches of the willow-tree and a scourge made of hemp are often used in the sick-room, not to beat the sufferer but the bed upon which he is prostrated. The more thorough the beating, the more efficacious it is to expel the wicked spirit.

In seasons of epidemic, children specially are seen with a triangle of yellow paper tied to a red cord around their necks.

Swords made of cash are supposed to exert a healthful sanitary influence in the homes; and to flourish knives in the most threatening attitude over sick persons is supposed to be very terrifying to the demons of disease. In cases of hemorrhage with women, it is sometimes considered best to suspend there, for an hour or two, bar the hair of the head.

As an illustration of the wonderful science of their medical books, let me quote you a few lines from a celebrated work by Heng Sok Hua, entitled, The Rhythm of the Pulse: "There are three pulses in each wrist. A man's strongest pulse is in his left wrist, a woman's in her right. In a man the pulse that lies nearest the hand is stronger than those that lie above; in a woman just the opposite is true; and it is considered a real misfortune if the pulse of either sex is found to be beating according to the rules of that of the other sex. In the left hand are located the pulses showing the diseases of the heart, the liver, the kidneys; while the right-hand pulses show the diseases of the lungs, spleen, and other organs."

We speak of people sometimes being as blind as a bat, but the Chinese, according to their national perversity, insist that nothing is so good for blindness as a boiled, stewed, or fricasseed bat.

Vaccination is practiced, but it is not considered worth while to save any but the boys from small-pox. Vaccine is too expensive to be thrown away on girls.

Melons, cucumbers and all fruits are freely given to the youngest children, and cholera infantum is fearfully prevalent.

The dwellings of China have, as a rule, very poor ventilation. Large families often live in single dark rooms. The only alleviation to the prevailing uncleanliness is that the custom is to live close to the purifying ground. While the washing of faces and hands is very frequent, the cleansing of the whole body is generally avoided. I met a person complaining of painful "doozatong," because he had accidentally fallen into water twelve years before.

Mid such ignorance and superstition prevailing among a population of not far from four hundred millions of people, it goes without the saying that there are special demands upon the medical work of Christian missions. If the people only realized their need they could make such a secular appear to the medical profession of the more enlightened lands, as would command the services of multitudes of qualified physicians. But China's millions do not appreciate their own intellectual darkness, their physical discomforts, and the destitute condition of their sick and suffering. Christian Missions, with more than mere financial and professional motives, must take to them the light of the sciences of disease and cure.

In Kin Kiang the officials, in opening a native hospital, acknowledged in their proclamation - "The foreigners, by their hospitals, schools, and other charitable institutions are rapidly stealing the hearts of the people."

In Canton there is a native home for aged women; fifty cents per month is the allowance for food. To the blind, only shelter is given, they being supposed to have special facility for begging. The young blind girls are trained to support themselves and their owners by a life of shame. In these so-called homes for the aged and blind women, bedding and clothing are not furnished. There are several asylums in Hang Chow; indeed, there are many throughout the country. But they are very uncomfortable, and almost entirely unsupplied with what we should consider necessary for the usefulness of such institutions.

Sometimes male physicians have access to sick women in their homes. But there is very general and strong aversion on the part of women to be treated by men. Even Christian native women, after years of acquaintance with foreigners, find it impossible to overcome this national prejudice. A Chinese woman cannot walk with her husband in the street, and cannot eat with him. It is not considered proper for girls or young women to go out alone, or to he present with male callers. The women of the middle and the upper classes of China have almost the seclusion of the Zenanas of India.

Access to the humbler classes, especially the women of the villages and interior cities, is often accompanied, in the case of the ordinary missionary, with rudeness and insults, but if the lady missionary is known to be a physician, she finds universally a prompt and cordial welcome, and has unparalleled opportunity to speak of the Christian doctrine. Accompanying Bible women are very useful, especially in the waiting-rooms of the dispensaries.

Taking-steamer now from Hong Kong, and glad if we escape a typhoon, we enter the Meinam, and are at Bang-kok, the capital of

SIAM.

This country has many physicians, but, as a rule, their ignorance and stupidity is remarkable even for Asia. Their number is unusually great in proportion to the population, because of a custom prevailing, especially among the Laos, of changing physicians every day. Although, under an enlightened king the country is making commendable progress in many directions, native doctors still have preference even in the palace of royalty, and the foreign missionary physicians are called in only when the native practice has failed.

The Siamese Materia-Medica includes bones, tiger and bear teeth, sea-shells, fish skins, crocodile blood, snake galls, bird's eyes, raven's bones, alligator shells, stones, and chips.

Special dependence is placed upon great combinations. The plaint often heard from the poor victim is: "I have taken pots full of medicine and am not cured." Scores of kinds of ingredients are often given in a single dose. A Bang-kok physician is known in one instance to have included in a single prescription one hundred and seventy-four ingredients, the whole to be taken in three doses. Four or five pots full of medicine are not infrequently given to a patient, each pot holding from four to five quarts. A pint for a single dose is not unusual. Children are sometimes left to die, because the doctors say they are too small to take the quantity of medicine required to cure them. The ambition of each native doctor is at every call upon a patient to dose at once, with every and all medicines at his command.

It is very customary to hang up recipes of great merit upon walls and marble tablets. Thus, on a temple in Siam, you may see, as an assured prescription for small-pox, the following: "One portion of conch shell, two kinds of aperient fruit, one portion of each; two kinds of sour leaves, one portion of each; one portion of asafoetida; one of borax; one of ginger; nine kinds of pepper; including the hottest, a portion of each; four kinds of cooling roots, a portion of each; one of an astringent root; four kinds of drastic cathartics, including the fruit and leaves of the croton plant, one portion of each; one of rhubarb, and one of epsom salts. Boil in three measures of water until it be diminished to one measure of the decoction. Then squeeze out the oily parts, dry and pulverize. A woman may take the weight of thirty cents in silver" (a coin trifle larger than a dime), "and a child may take the weight of seven and a half cents in silver."

Generally, that medicine is considered the best which has the largest number of ingredients and is the most nauseating.

Wind is considered the great cause of disease. Nine times out of ten when natives are asked what is the matter, they will reply, "Pen-lom" (wind).

When little children are suffering from measles, cold water is poured over them. Cholera patients are often fed on cucumbers and unripe watermelons. Every native doctor's residence is provided with the god of medicine. Into the hands of the idol every prescription is placed for a blessing, before it is administered to a patient. One good thing, if the latter dies the doctor can collect no fee.

It is believed that bad spirits cause much disease, and they must be propitiated by gifts of rice, fruit, flowers, and cloth. Many times the demons of pain are expelled by pounding, beating, even thumping with sharp instruments upon the body of the poor victim. In times of epidemic the native doctor will mumble prayers and-incantations over bits of string, and then cut them into five pieces and tie than around throat, wrists, and ankles. Lanterns are suspended over their houses, and they make little boats of banana leaves with wax candles in their center and float them on the rivers, all to propitiate the evil spirits.

When one has died in the home they will hang a net over the door leading from the room of the corpse, so as to bar the evil spirits from coming through and afflicting others with the disease.

The traveler in Siam is constantly meeting loathsome diseases, such as leprosy and small-pox, and there is not the least effort manifested to seclude or isolate the patient from the family. Indeed, the houses of the masses are very small, simply little dark huts; there is consequently no privacy. The sanitary condition of the people is very deplorable, and makes imperative demand upon the medical work of Christian missions.

At the time of motherhood great reliance is placed upon brutal pounding, and subsequently for thirty days the mother is roasted beside a hot fire, to replace, as they say, the exhausted fire of vitality.

Among the women there is much droll, stupid insanity.

There are no asylums, no homes for the aged, blind or poor, and no hospitals for the sick; there are no charitable institutions whatever. But the blind and aged can find shelter and some food from the priests at the temples. Hospitals are sadly needed, especially for women, in the charge of women.

And few institutions for Siam would be so great a blessing as a school for native trained women nurses.

The Siamese employ male physicians except in confinement, and then depend upon ignorant, elderly women. There is consequently a large and unnecessary loss of life.

The women of Siam are not secluded, except those of the palace, and move about freely upon the business streets, doing most of the buying and selling. The men prefer to sleep and gamble, and let the women do the work.

While the women are the most vigorous part of the population, they are considered only family drudges. They really deserve, as well as need, more than do the men, the benefactions of the most advanced medical science.

And we should not forget the missionaries themselves. It is cruel not to locate at every station a thoroughly qualified physician, and to provide him or her with a well-supplied dispensary. Think of a valued missionary stricken down at Petchaburi and no physician short of the capital, -one week distant by native boat!

While there are no Zenanas in Siam, custom so often requires exclusive female attendance in the sick-room, that the missionary-woman physician has special opportunity of teaching of Christ and His love, at a time when the soul is longing most for sympathy and rest. In the hours of motherhood Buddhism, the falsely called "Light of Asia," holds out the prospect, in case of death, only of an unending service to the god of the under world, where these women must carry water in leaky buckets to quench the fires around his burning feet.

Our women missionaries, especially when qualified as physicians, can give comfort and tidings of a brighter hope.

Again at sea, we voyage around the Malay Peninsula, and crossing the Bay of Bengal enter the vast country of populous

INDIA.

Among its nearly two hundred and sixty millions there is an immense number of physicians. Many of them have been educated at the British Government schools, but nearly all of them are heathen, and with heather prejudices against women. Their prevailing judgment is that those women are not fit to live who will do so indelicate a thing as to come to a dispensary for medicine.

Moslem doctors are called "Hakeems," and the Hindu, "Ba-ïds." The doses of the former, at least, are chiefly characterized by their great size and large number of ingredients.

Those native physicians who have not been educated in the Government schools are utterly ignorant of medical science and surgery. But even from them, Hindu women whether rich or poor, receive only very exceptional attention. Indeed, the native female nurses, who almost alone have access to more than a hundred millions of women of India, are nearly, if not quite, as harmful as of service, because of their ignorance, quackery, and immorality. The relatives of a sick woman in India would vastly prefer that she die than to send her to a Government hospital or have her visited by a male physician.

Much use is made of charms, such as particular bones, or fluids, or membranes of snakes, fowls, and small animals. Festoons across the street of certain leaves, and in their houses and temples, ceremonies in the worship of gods and devils, incantations, etc., are frequently used to avert disease or drive it away.

In the Naga hills of Assam, the doctor's chief service is to prescribe the kind of fowl or other small animal whose blood is to be shed at the door of the patient's house, and to help brandish knives over the sick person.

Small-pox and cholera, as well as various forms of hysteria and insanity, are supposed in India to be the work of spirits that have to be appeased by boiling rice in the presence of idols, sprinkling water toward the different quarters of the sky, offering gifts, and in endeavoring to drive off the effects of the "evil eye." As an incident of this latter superstition, a nice boy fell from a tree and broke his arm. The father tied it in splints, but a native doctor untied them, and tied it in bran; mortification set in, and the missionary offered to pay all expenses to the nearest hospital, two miles distant, but the "evil eye" was in that locality, and they would not allow him to be taken thither, so the boy died.

The native surgery, in case of tumors, teaches to avoid the knife, and trusts simply to physical force in tearing away the excrescence.

The diet practice of the native doctors is so exceedingly strict that it is but little removed from actual starvation.

By the Hindus, disease is generally credited to an angry deity. In a case of small-pox the patient is bathed, and the water then taken and offered at the shrine of the idol Ma-Sita.

At times of maternity, the treading, kneading, and pounding customs, the frightful lacerations, the starving and heating, are all too horrible for description. In Burma especially, my deepest sympathies were aroused for mothers, who, in their times of sorest need, were brutally walked upon by heavy feet.

If women do receive medicine from the Government dispensary, it is thrown to them as to dogs.

It is not a libel upon the Government, which, indeed, has done much noble work for men, though utterly failing thus far to meet the necessities of the women, to relate the following perfectly authenticated incident: A native Christian woman sprained her ankle; it became very serious. On application, the English surgeon replied, "Oh, the leg is very bad; anyway, she is only an old hag of a native woman, and no one will be any the worse if she dies. I can not be bothered with her, so give her some opium to quiet the pain and let her die."

The sanitary condition of the masses is as unsanitary as can possibly be imagined. Here is one of the most important phases of medical woman's-mission work. Having access to the homes and to the mothers, she has almost limitless opportunity for improving the healthful condition of the life.

In the dark and filthy dwellings, fevers, ophthalmia, and many other diseases are frightfully prevalent. The death-rate among children and women is far beyond that with which we are familiar in the most wretched quarters of our crowded cities.

One great difficulty encountered in the medical work of missions, as well as in all modern scientific treatment, is the native conviction that all medicine in liquid form is defiling. Remedies must be given in powder or pills.

The need of medical missions is constantly impressed upon the mind of the traveler throughout all parts of India, by meeting so many blind and crippled, deformed and palsied, and the more or less insane, one half at least of which poor unfortunates might have been saved from their sicknesses and infirmities by only a small fraction of the medical skill and resources with which all our Christian communities are familiar.

Indeed, were there no life beyond, no judgment day, no Saviour, medical emissions in India, as well as in other lands, deserve at our hands generous and prompt support.

But how much greater the duty when we can send to untold millions, through the medical missionary, the healing balm of the gospel. One dark-skinned native of this land, touched by the story of the gross as told by a medical missionary binding up a ghastly wound, caught the notes of the heavenly music, and has sung for the world those beautiful lines-

"O, thou my soul, forget no snore
The Friend who all thy sorrows bore;
Let every idol be forgot,
But, O, my soul, forget Him not."

While outside of foreign influence no effort is made to provide for human beings asylums and places of help and cure, there are many for monkeys, dogs, and other animals. The explanation is found in the Hindu doctrine of transmigration of souls.

The women of the Zenanas are very rigidly excluded from male attendance, and none of the higher caste women ever go to the Government dispensaries. Whenever exception is made to the rigid rule of Zenana seclusion, precautionary measures are taken. The eye and tongue of the patient must be seen through ~ slit in the curtain; also in the same way must the pulse be felt, all the conversation being carried on by second parties on both sides of the screen. Through such openings there must be no other observations. In one instance the patient inadvertently saw and afterward made remark upon the color and size of the male doctor's hand, of which she had ought just a glimpse. That was enough. Her doom was sealed, and her modest relatives starved her to death.

Only those with love for souls are able to bear with the unattractiveness, uncleanliness, and ignorance of the great masses of the sick women of India. Of course there are large numbers of women among the higher classes who are every way neat and attractive, with intelligence, and some of them with culture equal to any in Christian lands.

But with all, only a woman's tact and patience are equal to the needs.

A Christian woman-doctor in India can be doubly a missionary.

By steamer from Bombay to Bushire, and we are in

PERSIA.

On camels and horses must be our journeyings. The numerous inefficient native physicians whom we meet, know nothing of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and chemistry. They are, indeed quite a shrewd class of men, who have studied carefully the old Arabic system of Empiricists, and are themselves keen observers; but without science, mere experience indeed amounts to little. They believe all foods to be heating or cooling, a good distinction, indeed, but their divisions are absurd. The meat of a hen is heating, and therefore injurious to persons who have fevers; the flesh of a rooster, however, is very cooling, and the soup of it may be eaten in febrile diseases. The water of watermelons is constantly given in large quantities in all inflammatory troubles. The flesh of the sheep is heating, that of the goat cooling.

Probably the greatest remedy they have, the one they believe most blindly in, is the woman's milk who is nursing a female child. They consider it good for consumption and all wasting diseases. This does much harm. because they often trust to a few ounces of that weak milk, when the patient should have good nourishment.

Bleeding is practiced to an extent injurious in the extreme, even for organic troubles. They do not take blood from the most convenient vein, but have many rules indicating which vein must be opened in each particular disease. For sterility they bleed the patient in back of the hand. To a Mohammedan, swine's flesh is very unclean, yet a few drops of swine's blood is considered very beneficial in articular rheumatism and some other diseases.

Sickness is generally considered the punishment of God for sins, so all who are diseased, or are suffering from infirmities, are esteemed as criminals, and are to a large extent treated. The people are very superstitious and are very much given to the wearing of amulets.

The sanitary condition is extremely wretched among the great majority, whether Moslems, Koords, Armenians, Jews or even Nestorians.

The ruling Moslems have no asylums or other kindred institutions. The poor are encouraged to beg, for the followers of Islam believe that alms-giving is laying up treasure in heaven. The Nestorians of Oroomiah have established one asylum under the leadership of a native, who gathered his ideas and inspiration from a personal visit to London.

There is a full supply of native midwives, but they are very ignorant, superstitious, and inefficient. Probably as a class, they do more harm than good. Persian ladies of the higher classes admit male physicians, as it were, under protest, and never receive treatment except indirectly for their own peculiar troubles.

Medical women missionaries have special opportunity for evangelistic work in Persia. None others have access to multitudes of homes. One missionary of this land tells me: "It has always been my aim in dealing with individuals in the hospital, and as far as possible outside, to conduct the conversation in such a way as to lead them to look to the Great Physician who alone can heal them and bless the means used for their recovery. I always endeavor to direct their thoughts to God."

Coming homeward, but still seven thousand miles away, we are in

SYRIA AND ASIA MINOR.

The native doctors are very numerous, many of them being Greeks who have been educated at Athens. When recently I was in that city, I was told there were seven hundred medical students in the university. The majority of these establish themselves in practice throughout the Levant. But nearly all these physicians belong to a very, very old school, use powerful medicines, and are very much given to cupping, blistering, and leeches.

Among the uneducated practitioners there are those who are thought to be very successful in reading away disease. This reading consists in saying over a form of words. One form is: " Exorcismeno to Kak-ho, exorcismeno to Kak-ho" ("Let the evil be exorcised, let the evil be exorcised").

Here and there are to be found a few women who have studied at the medical institutions of the Greeks, and have received certificates authorizing them to treat diseases of women. Many others are trying to follow their example without qualification or education. When in emergencies male doctors are summoned, they prove to have made no special study of women's diseases, as public sentiment and economy favor the exclusive employment of women in all ordinary cases.

It seems to be the prevailing judgment of the medical practice throughout the Ottoman Empire, that if a small dose of any medicine will do good, a larger dose of the same will do more good. And their generalizations are often quite absurd.

A Turkish physician had a case of typhus fever and considered it hopeless. But the patient recovered, drinking meanwhile a pailful of pickled-cabbage juice. The doctor noted the important discovery at once in his book: "Cured of typhus fever, Mahommed Agha, an upholsterer, by drinking a pailful of pickled-cabbage juice." On his next patient the doctor attempted the same marvelous cure, but unsuccessfully. The dose was as fatal as a bullet. Whereupon the scientific physician at once made the following memorandum: "Although in cases of typhus fever pickled-cabbage juice is an efficient remedy, it is not, however, to be used unless the patient be by profession an upholsterer."

The chief surgical instrument among the common people is a jack-knife.

There is no confidence among the masses in scientific medical treatment, and they need yet to be educated up to it. Multitudes believe in the use of charms. Especially they dread the evil eye, and to rid themselves of its influence they use beads upon their houses, persons, and on their domestic animals. In times of sickness the judgments of neighbors are eagerly sought, and all of their suggestions are taken as to medicine and diet. And such practice is regarded as more reliable than that of the regular doctor. As a, rule no guard is taken against exposure to disease.

Fatalism is the doctrine of nearly all. They meet every illness in a, despondent spirit, (declaring, almost hopelessly, "It is from God."

All medical attention is given to cure, none to means and methods of prevention. Every sanitary law is transgressed. When scientific prescriptions are written out and left with patients, it is very common to simply dissolve the paper in water, which they drink and thus save the expense of the apothecary.

There are a few native asylums and hospitals, but they are very inadequately furnished and unsatisfactory.

The harems are practically as exclusive as the Zenanas of India. Only women missionaries, to whom medical skill gives special facilities, can break through such seclusion. Among all classes of women in the Levant our duty is plain, as sisters blest with the light and liberty of the Gospel.

The dark continent of

AFRICA

is enlisting at present the commercial and religious interest of all Christendom. Among the numerous discoveries which are being made, it is found that here is a vast field for those who are touched with the spirit of Christian philanthropy. The various populations have their own physicians, but these are very largely mere witch-doctors, full of ignorance, superstition imposture, and greed. Usually medical attendance is very expensive, for it is customary, at least in west equatorial Africa, for the doctor to go to the house and stay there with only the one patient on his hands, until it is kill or cure.

The cause of disease is generally attributed to witches or to evil spirits. To drive away such spirits, noise is esteemed a very potent weapon. Hence it is common to beat drums and fire guns to exorcise the demons of disease. Among the Moslems a frequent remedy is to float a verse or word of the Koran on water, and then to drink the miraculously affected liquid.

The homes and food of the natives are very unhealthy. Filth abounds, and many of their mixtures for eating are so spiced and full of red peppers as to suggest the eating of live coals or papers of pins. Clothing is not usually provided for children. Girls are frequently married at the age of ten or twelve. Upon the Nile I have seen nothing more pitiable than the worse than beastly neglect of the Fellaheen children. Among them ophthalmia is startlingly prevalent and severe.

The natives have no asylums nor charitable plans for the relief of the sick, blind, infirm, or unfortunate. They seem to hate never thought of such a thing. Although sometimes doing a kind deed, anything like love and pity is unknown among the unconverted natives. They do doctor the sick, but the aged, if decrepit, and those who are otherwise so infirm as to require considerable care, are made away with; are knocked on the head with a club, thrown into the river, or are dragged out into the jungle and left there to die. The tender mercies of Africa are indeed cruel.

The time has come when it is inexcusable for the Christian women of our land to be unacquainted with the religious life and social customs of our neighboring republic of

MEXICO.

Excellent doctors can be found in all the larger cities of that land, but not in the smaller towns and rural districts. Common people generally feel that if they are ill they must die.

Most of the faith in recovery is based upon the supposed help of the saints. They believe in the healing power of relics, holy charms, and miraculous springs. Invalid pilgrims travel many weary miles to reach them.

The Indians, who constitute the larger part of the population, are wonderfully poor, ignorant, and superstitious, and receive little or no attention in sickness. Their dwellings are low, one-story adobe huts without windows or chimneys, with but single doors not high enough to enter without stooping. The floors are of earth, without carpet or mat. The bed is only a matting in the corner. All the family huddle together in this single room.

In the city of Mexico there is an institute for the blind, another for the deaf and dumb, and a public dispensary; also an insane asylum, a foundling hospital, home of maternity, and leper institute. But all this supply at the capital only emphasizes the destitution throughout the country.

Among all classes the midwife is preferred to the male doctor. The latter is very seldom galled. As a rule, the women are perfect slaves to the will of the priests.

There are

OTHER LANDS

where would be interesting for us to linger, did the limits of this paper allow.

There is Chili, which has made such wonderful material progress during the last ten years. Its physicians and nurses are numerous, and largely qualified for their duties, although among the common people there is much faith in the intercession of saints' in the efficacy of bones, images, pictures, and holy water. The same may be said of Brazil.

And there is Corea, or, more properly, Chosön, the higher classes of whose girls are absolutely inaccessible to other than woman's mission efforts. Indeed, this is true of all the women. They are not taken into account in the social life of their land' mentally or morally. They run wild until seven years of age, then are permitted to be seen by only father and brothers, and, after marriage, by father-in-law and husband.

When poverty compels a Corean woman to pass from the seclusion of her home, if it may called home, no one she may meet must recognize her or pay her any courtesies.

The most encouraging beginnings of mission work among the nearly twelve million people of this new and interesting field have been made under medical auspices. In the very palace of the King, consecrated medical science has won a standing-place. It is to be earnestly hoped that immediately several qualified missionary physicians, both men and women, may be found ready to go, to follow up this great advantage.

Then there is Madagascar and New Zealand, and many other great islands of the sea, where the belief in disease spirits is prevalent, and where the masses are ignorant of anatomy, physiology, and all laws of health, and resort to charm and witchery, and other absurd and cruel methods of cure.

Numerous and great as are thus evidently the needs of the world-wide field, the supreme motive, after all, is in grateful love to Him, whose mission to this world was for the sake of both bodies and souls, and who sent forth His disciples with the command: "Heal the sick, and say the Kingdom of God has come nigh unto you."

Surely the healing mission of the religion of Christ is calling to every one of us women of Christian lands. In the name of Him, to whom we owe all the endearments of home, all the royalties of' our motherhood and sisterhood, millions are calling for us to help them also up to lives that are worth living.

"From the prison-like Zenanas,
From the lowly heathen kraals,
From the poor down-trodden Orient,
From old China's crumbling walls,
Fainting, hungering, thirsting, dying,
Women just like you and me,
Still are calling sadly calling,
Sister, they are calling thee."

We should give our cordial cooperation to movements similar to that under Lady Dufferin in India, for the education of native women as physicians and trained nurses. This means the previous education and sending forth of many competent instructors. It is far better that all this should be done under evangelical Christian auspices.

The urgent need to-day is for such a consecration in our Christian homes that many of our earnest, educated girls shall say, "Here am I; send me." Never were there such opportunities for young women to be fully educated as to-day, never for them so many wide-open doors of usefulness. O that more of the spirit of Him who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, might rest upon than! Then, indeed, with many would it be as with the Indian who, responding to the love of Christ, took off feathers and beads, saying, "These for Jesus"; and then added as he laid himself down upon the pile of ornaments, "Me give Indian too."

In the palace of the King of Corea there is a loud call for a medical missionary lady, China has need of many, India begs for more women missionary physicians; so in many other lands.

But the education, as well as the sending and support of medical women missionaries, means money, and a good deal of it. As a rule, when general school training is ended, the struggle of life begins, and few young women can then command the funds for special professional study. In scores of cases we should step right in at this crisis, as I know we have opportunity at the present time, and say to young educated Christian women, "Take now a thorough course of medical training, and we will help you." What is more important than to enable our Missionary Boards to do this very thing to-day?

There are indeed signs of progress, such as the graduation in Philadelphia this year al; the Woman's Medical College of a high caste lady from India, and the presence on that occasion of a learned Christian widow from that same land, who has recently filled the position of professor of Sanskrit in a college in England. The Queen of the British Empire has received the appeal of a princess of India in behalf of the Zenanas. Her Majesty replied, "We had no idea it was as bad as this; something must be done for those poor creatures." But we have the example of a greater than earth's greatest sovereign. He who is "King of kings and Lord of lords" bids us hasten, with our hearts and gifts, to help forward woman's medical work in foreign missions.

"Be swift my soul to answer Aim; Be jubilant, my feet: Our God is marching on !"