The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1928, Page 158

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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* 158

TIIE LUTILERAN PIONEER.

of which cannot be put into print, followed by a
journey in a springless cart over miles of rutted
country road. She is laid upon the operating-table

with the aid of anesthetics at hand; there is still
time to save the baby.

But what of the mother?

Hospital, Ambur.

Only one more case of “too late.” Pulseless, yet
perfectly conscious, she hears the permission given
to relatives to take her home and knows all too well
what those words mean. The hospital has saved her
baby; her it cannot save. Clinging to the doctor,
she cries : —

“OQ Amma, I am frightened! Why do you send
me away! I must live. My little children! This
is the eighth. I don’t care for myself, but I must
live for them. Who will care for them when I am
gone? Oh, let me live!”

But the doctor could only answer, “Too late!”

Another example: On that road where the
doctor passes by, she one day saw a beautiful one-
year-old baby boy, “the only son of his
mother.” His eyelids were shut and swollen.
‘Wis history?” the doctor asks. Ordinary
country sore eyes, which somehow refused to
get well; a journey through the dust and
heat to a distant shrine of healing; number-
less circlings of the temple according to or-
‘thodox Hindu rites; then a return home to
order from the village jeweler two solid silver
eyeballs as offerings to the deity of the
shrine. Weeks are consumed by these doings,
for in sickness as in health the East moves
slowly. Meantime the eyes are growing more
swollen and give more pain. At last some one
speaks of the weekly visit of the doctor on the
Gudiyattam Road.

The doctor picked up the baby, pushed back the
swollen eyelids, and washed away the masses of pus,
only to find both eyeballs utterly destroyed. One

more to be added to the army of India’s blind! One
more case of “too late”?! One more atom in the
mass of India’s unnecessary, preventable suffering,
that suffering which moved to compassion the heart
of Christ. How many more weary generations must
pass before we, His followers, make such
incidents impossible? How many more In-
dian women with pitying eyes and tender
hands shall have carried the gift of healing,
the better gift of health, through the roads
and villages of India?

The scene is a ward in a Christian hos-
pital for women in South India. The pa-
tients in adjacent beds, convalescents, con-
verse together.

“What’s the matter with you?” says Bed
No. 1 contentedly. “My husband became
angry with me, because the meal wasn’t
ready when he came home, and he cut my
face. The doctor, Miss Sahib, has mended me;
she has done what my own mother would not do.”
Said another in reply to the same question, “The
cow horned my arm, but until I got pneumonia,
I couldn’t stop milking or making bread for the
father of my children, even if it was broken. The
hospital is my mahap (mother-father) .”

“What care would you get at home?” chimed in
another, who had been burning up with fever.
“Oh, I would be out in the deserted part of the
women’s quarters! It would be a wonderful, thing
if any should pass me a cup of water,” she replied.
From another bed a young wife of sixteen spoke of
having suffered with abscesses. “One broiling day,”

Hospitals, India.

she said, “I had fainted with thirst. The midwives
had neglected me all through the night, and think-
ing I was dying, they threw me from the cord-bed
to the floor and dragged me down the steep stone
staircase to the lowest cellar, where I was lying,
next to the evil-smelling dust-bin, ready for removal
by those who carry away the dead, when the doctor,