Dr. Samuel R. House did not have time nor need to “hang out a
shingle” upon reaching Bangkok. He had been there only a few
days—not long enough to unpack his goods—when “a message came
from some great man by three trusty servants that a servant whom he
loved very much had got angry and had half cut his hand off with a
sword.”
This wound was not accidental but self-inflicted. It was a
perverted result of a Siamese custom. In those days slavery
prevailed in the country. Besides the war-captives who were cast
into slavery, custom made it possible for any of the common people
to be sold into servitude. If a man failed to pay a debt there were
two alternatives before him, to be confined in one of the horrible
jails until he discharged his obligation, or to sell himself or his
wife or children into slavery to remain in that state until the
accumulated value of the services should cancel the debt.
Only too often these debts were the result of gambling, a vice
that was universally prevalent under license of the government. If
the debtor was fortunate enough, he might sell the chosen victim
to some lord who was willing to accept the services in pledge for
a loan with which to pay the actual creditor. Such an arrangement
was not altogether without its advantages, for many an improvident
spendthrift had a comfortable living for himself and family assured
by the better management of his lord. But once in servitude the
victim was likely to be held in peonage indefinitely, because
usury on the loan was liable to mount up faster than the value of
services rendered.
It will readily be imagined that a man so improvident as to permit
himself to fall into slavery would not be the most willing worker,
and many would be the tricks of the lazy man to labour as little
as possible. A rather common scheme to avoid an unpleasant duty
or merely to spite the over-lord was to go to the extreme of
inflicting upon self a wound that would incapacitate from work.
Such was the nature of this first surgical case to which Dr. House
was called.
The readiness with which this great man summoned a strange foreign
doctor will be easily understood when it is known that for twelve
years previous there had been an American physician in Bangkok.
Since 1835 Rev. Daniel B. Bradley, M.D., representing the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (A B C F M), had been
practising medicine and he had established a high reputation among
all classes for western medicine and surgery. On account of the
recent death of his wife, Dr. Bradley, with his young children,
had sailed for home only a few weeks before the arrival of the new
missionary.
When Dr. House set out for Siam he knew that Dr. Bradley was
there and, having had no practical experience in his profession
before leaving home, he looked forward to beginning his labours in
association with one who not only was a skilled practitioner but
who also knew the pathological conditions of the Siamese. When,
upon arrival, Dr. House discovered that Dr. Bradley had withdrawn
he felt some alarm at the absence of professional counsel, for
he had a constitutional lack of self-confidence that caused him
to feel a painful burden of responsibility in prescribing for
patients. At the end of the first six months he wrote:
“Whatever seemed once likely to be my fate it is pretty
certain now that there is more danger of my wearing out than
of rusting out in this land. Have been on the run or occupied
with visitors all the day and evening ... and my poor brain
has, like its fellow labourer the heart, been compelled to go
through with a great deal. What sights of human misery I am
compelled to see. And to feel that I have not the power of
skill to alleviate,—the iron enters my soul.”
Whatever may have been the first effect of being compelled to enter
upon his profession alone, it is doubtful whether Dr. House ever
perceived that this constraint was probably one means by which he
gained the confidence of the Siamese within a very short period.
For instead of being regarded either as a competitor or as an
assistant to Dr. Bradley, he was accepted at the outset upon the
reputation which his predecessor had so firmly established. It was
this repute of western medicine which caused the great man to send
so promptly for an unknown physician to treat the self-mutilated
servant.
Quickly it became known among the people of Bangkok that another
physician had arrived. The calls for treatment came in such numbers
and with such importunity that in self-defense it was deemed
wise to open the dispensary which had remained closed since the
departure of Dr. Bradley, although there was only a limited supply
of drugs on hand and the nearest base of supplies was London. The
dispensary, or hospital as it was sometimes called, of which Dr.
House thus suddenly found himself the proprietor and whole staff,
was just one of the innumerable floating houses which lined the
river banks of the Siamese capital. It is said that when this new
capital was being established the common people were not allowed to
build houses on land but permitted to live only in boats. At any
rate, until modern times the larger portion of the population lived
in floating houses.
These houses are simply constructed. A raft of bamboo forms the
foundation, which is moored to the bank or to poles driven into the
mud. Upon that foundation a one-story house of boards, thatched
with palm leaves, is built. The house is, customarily, divided into
three rooms. At either end, extending clear across the floor is
a kitchen and a common bedroom. The space between is occupied by
the common living-room and a porch. The living-room is fully open
along the porch, from which it is separated by the rise of a step.
Closely packed together in irregular rows, sometimes two or three
deep, these houses are ranged along the banks of the river and of
the many canals that form the Venetian highways of the city. The
channel beneath the houses, kept from being stagnant by movement
of the tide, served at once as the sewer and the family bath. Many
of these houses are occupied as stores, with their merchandise
exposed to the full view of the customer who does his shopping in a
boat.
It was such a house as this that served the missionary as a
hospital. But “hospital” is scarcely the proper word to use judged
from the equipment, which consisted of a chair or two, a table for
operations and a few mats for the patients. But the place had one
great advantage—the open side exposed the work of the foreign
doctor to the gaze of the curious natives who stopped while passing
in their boats, and then related to their friends the wonders they
had seen.
Here in this rude native shelter, until he gave up his profession,
Dr. House applied himself with deep devotion and self-abandon to
relieving the physical sufferings of the people. He placed himself
wholly at their service, and made no discrimination between rank
of those he served. Frequently he would not reach the dinner table
till the middle of the afternoon, detained by the importuning
patients; and he even laments that the people would not summon him
in the night time in case of serious need.