The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1933, Page 18

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18

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

A Promising Missionary Enterprise.

About six months ago we told our readers about
a new missionary enterprise of the Atlantic Dis-
trict of the Missouri Synod among the consumptives

that are seeking a cure in the Adirondack Moun-

Government Hospital, Sunmount, N. Y.

tains of New York. In that region, within a small
radius of Saranac Lake, there are thousands of
victims of the “white plague,” all looking for a cure
from the insidious disease that has laid hold upon
them. Because of its elevation above sea-level and
the dryness of its climate, this region is regarded as
particularly promising of a cure from tuberculosis,
and hence the great number of tubercular patients
in and about Saranac Lake. All told, there are
probably as many as 4,000 sick people in the
neighborhood that we are speaking of.

In Saranac Lake there is a General Hos-
pital, a Reception Hospital, a Roman Catholic
Sanitarium, and there are more than a hundred
private nursing homes. This village has a pop-
ulation of about 8,000, and of this number |
5,000 are people who have tuberculosis or have -
had it. The private nursing homes of the vil-
lage house 2,000 patients alone. On the out-
skirts of Saranac Lake is Trudeau Sanitarium,
a well-known institution, with 200 patients.
Only two miles away is the Variety Actors’
Lodge, with sixty-five patients, though there
is room for 200; the small number of patients
is due to a lack of funds needed to take care
of more. Two miles beyond the Variety Actors’
Lodge is the State Sanitarium, Raybrook, where
800 patients are housed. Raybrook consists of
a large group of buildings, situated right in the
forest. Most of the patients housed here are
from the Metropolitan area, persons who very likely
never saw a forest before. ‘The surroundings are
ideal—single rooms for the serious cases, open
sleeping-porches, beautifully furnished sun parlors,
with pianos, plants, radios, birds, fish, billiard-tables,

and handsomely draped windows. Plenty of the
best of food is furnished all the patients, and they
are given all the milk they care to drink. The
patients are encouraged to take walks in the pine
forest surrounding the sanitarium, if their strength
permits them to do so.

At Stony Wold, on Lake Kushequa, twenty-four
miles away from Saranac Lake, is a tubercular hos-
pital for women and girls, and thirty miles west
lies the large United States Veterans’ Hospital,
where 400 former soldiers of our country are re-
ceiving the best care a grateful country can give
those who risked their lives in its cause.

Finally we should mention the fact that in this
region there are two country hospitals, with thirty
beds each.

An interesting bit of information is also this,
that many of the doctors and nurses in these
sanitaria and hospitals are former consumptives,
who came here to be cured and after their cure have
stayed to help others regain their health. “Saved
to serve; helped to help others.” A fine lesson in
this for us who have been brought from death to
life, from darkness to light, from sin to grace, that
we should henceforth live unto Him who has done
all this for us by sharing our good fortune with our
fellow-men.

Pastor Otto Sieker, who is in charge of the
mission-work done in the Adirondacks by our

The Missionary Brings Good Cheer.

Church, preaches regularly in four of the institu-
tions we have mentioned: in Trudeau, Sunmount,
Raybrook, and Actors’ Lodge. ‘Trudeau has a
beautiful chapel, with a microphone attached to the
pulpit, by which means the message of the Gospel is