_The Right to the Ordinary Safeguards of Good Health_
"They must count the cost, and be prepared to live lives of
privation, of toil, and perhaps of loneliness and danger.
They will need to trust God to meet their need in sickness
as well as in health, since it may sometimes be impossible
to secure expert medical aid. But, if they are faithful
servants, they will find in Christ and in His Word a
fulness, a meetness, a preciousness, a joy and strength,
that will far outweigh any sacrifice they may be called upon
to make for Him."
_--The Overseas Manual of the
China Inland Mission
Overseas Missionary Fellowship_
(1955), p. 4.
I carefully spread a large handkerchief on the desk to keep my arm
from sticking, took up my pen, and began painstakingly to practice
writing the intricate Chinese characters before me. Every few minutes
I stopped to wipe the perspiration from my face.
"How about going out to Uncle Wong's with me?" My sister had come into
the room. "The pastor's wife intended to go with me, but now she has
company and can't go. It will give you a good chance to practice
talking Chinese, so the time won't be wasted--as far as your study
goes, I mean."
We got our umbrellas, palm-leaf fans, and tract bags, and started off.
The sun was beating down, and the temperature certainly was higher
outdoors, but the breeze gave an illusion of coolness, and the
pleasant country road upon which we soon entered was enough to make up
for a little extra heat. The two miles were quickly covered, and we
found ourselves greeted effusively by Mrs. Wong and her daughter.
"Imagine you two teachers coming out here today, when it's so hot! We
are entirely unworthy of such consideration! Why, you might make
yourselves ill, not being used to such heat in your honorable country!
Do sit down and rest! This bamboo bed here in the shade of the house
is a cool spot. Daughter, get the teachers fans. Oh, you have brought
them with you! Yes, fans are indispensable in this weather! Quickly
start the fire, daughter, and heat water for tea! Oh--" a sudden
thought struck her, "we have no tea leaves in the house! Daughter, you
run to the neighbors and borrow some. Don't go to any of these folk
nearby. They are all poor and probably wouldn't have any. Go to Fourth
Aunt's, over in the other end of the village."
At home we always kept a crock of cooled boiled water on hand, but
here there was nothing like that; and drinking unboiled water was as
unthinkable to her as it was to us. We protested vigorously that we
would just as soon have "white tea" (boiling water) as tea made with
leaves, but Mrs. Wong would not hear of such a thing. Suddenly an idea
struck her.
"Oh," she said, "I know something much better! Daughter, just run to
the garden and pick some cucumbers! They'll be better than hot tea
anyway, and quench one's thirst just as effectively."
The daughter ran off. After a few minutes the big son came along with
two brimming buckets of cold well water and poured it into the stone
water butt, which had been almost empty. "Do you prefer to wash your
faces in cold water or hot?" Mrs. Wong asked.
"Oh, cold, please!" we both replied, already feeling in anticipation
that cold water on our hot faces; but Mrs. Wong, conscience-smitten,
was already lighting the fire. "Oh, I shouldn't have asked such a
foolish question!" she rattled on. "Of course cold water won't remove
perspiration. No, no, it's no trouble. It will be warm enough in just
a minute."
The hot water was ladled into the basin, and Mrs. Wong looked
inquiringly around the room. I poked my sister. "She's looking for a
washcloth," I whispered in English. "Quick, tell her we have one, or
she'll be putting their already used one in!"
Fortunately the family washcloth hadn't been discovered by the time
ours was produced; and we proceeded to wash. I, being the younger,
dutifully allowed my sister to use the water first. "Don't wash too
close around your eyes," said my sister in an aside to me. "Someone in
the family might have sore eyes, and there might be germs on the
basin."
After we had finished with the basin of hot water, Mrs. Wong took
advantage of it, having found her own washcloth in the meantime. Just
at that moment the daughter returned with her apron full of cucumbers,
and politely offered a large one to my sister. Her mother quickly
snatched it away.
"As big a girl as that, and you don't know anything about hygiene!"
she reproved, sternly. "You haven't even washed them!"
As the cucumbers were being washed with the cold well water, I thought
to myself that they were probably no more germ-free after the bath
than before. Unboiled water from shallow wells is not necessarily free
from germs. I said nothing, however. After the daughter had finished
scrubbing the cucumbers, the mother got a knife and carefully peeled
two big ones. Then she handed them to us. Her own she did not bother
to peel.
"We Chinese are very unhygienic," she apologized. "Of course _you_
wouldn't eat cucumbers without peeling them!"
What would she have thought if she knew that to our minds neither the
washing in cold water nor the peeling made them safe to eat? I glanced
at my sister, who was usually very particular about seeing that all
raw fruits and vegetables were scalded before eating, and was
astonished to find that she was placidly and unconcernedly munching
her cucumber. She and Mrs. Wong were already striking up a lively
conversation about something else. I followed her example, and found
the cucumber very refreshing.
"How can you be so particular about scalding things at home, and then
go out to the country and eat unscalded cucumbers?" I asked, as we
were wending our way home.
"Oh, we couldn't possibly offend Mrs. Wong by refusing to eat what she
had to offer us!" was my sister's reply. "We certainly ought to be as
particular as we can when we are in our own home; but when we are
guests, and it's a question of offending someone--well, I think the
Lord looks after those cases!"
* * * * *
Teacups! Beautiful Kingtechen china of the thousand-flower pattern,
thin and exquisite; or perhaps just a rough earthenware cup, with the
handle missing. Everywhere we went in China we found teacups.
Everywhere we went the first thing we were offered was a cup of tea.
Fragrant tea, bitter tea, hot tea, cold tea; tea served in
hand-painted china, tea in an earthenware bowl--whatever the cup was,
we lifted it to our lips and drank. What was the first thing we
thought of as we tasted the tea? Whether it was pleasant or otherwise?
The kindness of the one who offered it to us? Or the dangers that
might lurk on the edge of that cup? For tea, even very hot tea, cannot
be expected to sterilize the rim of the cup; and who knows who used it
previously, or what dangerous disease he might have had? It had been
washed, of course, or at least rinsed out, but--
"Don't the Chinese scald their dishes when they wash them?" you ask.
Well, do you? "M-m-m, not always, but the danger is much less in
America," you say. That may be true; but it is hard to realize the
danger of infection in one's own home, wherever it may be; and even
those who live under what we might call unhygienic conditions are no
more conscious of the danger in their own homes than you are in yours.
I used to think, sometimes, that the most dangerous thing we met with
in China was just an ordinary teacup, and that the germs that lurked
on its rim were more menacing than tigers or bandits. (Let me hastily
add that in all my fifteen years in that country, and having partaken
of tea from ten thousand teacups, more or less, in many places and in
many homes, I am still quite alive, and in good health and spirits!)
"Now, that wouldn't worry me!" you think cheerfully. "I'm just not
particular!"
I am sorry, but that is not at all the conclusion I want you to draw
from the above remarks. I am giving no one license for not being
careful. No child of God should feel at liberty to disregard what he
knows to be the rules of good health, just because he feels like it,
much less the man or woman on the mission field.
* * * * *
The cook comes in with a basket of foodstuffs fresh from the market.
The young missionary spots a particularly luscious plum, picks it up,
and takes a bite.
"Mary!" a scandalized senior gasps. "_Whatever_ are you thinking of?
Eating that plum without scalding it first! You'll likely get cholera
or typhoid and die!"
Yes, in most mission stations the rules of hygiene are adhered to very
strictly, and it would be a hardy junior worker who could come through
alive without observing them.
Perhaps several years have gone by. You are in charge of the home
yourself, and the "discipline" relaxes a bit. Perhaps you even resort
to washing your fruit in cold boiled water instead of scalding it,
because scalding does spoil it so! Then the younger workers are sent
to you, and you become the head of a new family. One day, suddenly,
one of them gets a violently upset stomach. Is it cholera? The nearest
hospital is two days' journey away. You catch your breath, and go
ahead caring for her the best you can with your limited medical
knowledge, a constant cry going up from your heart to the only One who
can help, to Him who is the only all-sufficient One! If you are
fortunate your junior recovers. From that time on, all the fruit that
appears on your table will be thoroughly scalded.
* * * * *
This is not a chapter on missionary health. It does not purpose to
instruct you in the rules of hygiene. Rather it inquires into
attitudes. Is the missionary to be as particular as he can about
everything (fussy, some may call it), or should his faith be great
enough so that he overlooks the rules of the doctors? Or perhaps, are
there times when the one attitude is desirable, and times for the
other?
The Lord of the harvest has sent us forth. A dead laborer, or even a
sick one, is not much use. It is surely our duty to take all sensible
precautions, and whenever possible to use the safeguards to health
with which modern science has provided us. We have no right at all to
disobey the rules of hygiene just because we happen to feel like it.
But on the other hand, when those among whom we are ministering,
people whose training is different from ours, who have no conception
of modern hygiene, out of the love in their hearts provide us with
things to eat and drink, surely then is the time to say with Paul,
"asking no questions for conscience' sake" (I Cor. 10:27). Surely in
cases where adhering strictly to the rules of hygiene would hinder the
fulfilling of our commission, we can trust the One who sent us forth
to look after us.