His record of patients, to one who is not familiar with a
physician’s records, gives astonishment at the kind of cases
which seemed to predominate. One class was the ulcers and running
sores—many of them most aggravated. These usually were the
result of long-neglected wounds. He writes of extracting bamboo
splinters great and small that had become imbedded in the flesh and
remained there to produce serious inflammation and infection. In
such cases an ignorance too dense for intelligence to comprehend
was the contributory cause of untold suffering. A second class
of cases frequently appearing was that of fresh wounds resulting
from drunken brawls, street fights, treachery and revenge, or
self-mutilation. Scarcely a week passed but a patient was brought
in with head cut open, face gashed, back lashed, or some other
gaping cut. But most loathsome of all were the diseases which the
doctor characterised as the result of vices—diseases which found
victims among all sorts and conditions of men who “working that
which is unseemly” received “in themselves that recompense of their
errors which was meet.”
A cursory review of one day’s succession of patients will be
suggestive. Here returns a man with a tumor on his ear, having the
previous day been advised to come for an operation:
“With good courage and I believe without a trembling hand, I
sat down to this, my first operation not only in the Kingdom
of Siam, but the first operation I think I ever undertook. It
was a simple one, and oh, I cannot but catch such a glimpse
of my Father’s loving-kindness in thus gently leading his
poor ignorant by such simpler cases into the confidence in
myself necessary to do the more serious cases which will
doubtless fall to my lot.... Believing that without His
blessing the simplest operation would fail and with it the
most doubtful one might prosper, I lifted up my heart a
moment to Him in whose name I had ventured to come among this
people to try to do them good.”
While attending him, a boat came up with two women, one a loathsome
object full of sores and scabs—face, hands and limbs—the scars
of former ulcers. A Chinaman with a scrofulous neck—a lad with
gastric derangement—a boy whose leg was transfixed with a sharp
piece of bamboo—so moves the procession. As he returns late for
dinner he observes:
“This morning was fully occupied till dinner at 2 p. m.,
trying to do the works of mercy—how could I send any
away empty! And oh, how happy I should have been in such
Christ-like works had I but knowledge of the diseases, and
judgment and skill. As it is now, the deciding what is to be
done with each case is an act of the mind positively painful,
because I am constantly fearing that I may not follow the
best possible plan.”
On another day thus reads the entry:
“On going down to the floating house at 9 a. m., found several
new patients. A Chinaman of fifty, with caries of the lower
jaw, skin of cheek adhering, pus has discharged from a large
cavity within the mouth. Another Chinaman with syphilitic
destruction of the bones of the nose—a hole left in the
flattened face where pus was discharging.... He seemed to
be in great torment—eaten of worms literally. Now a mother
brings a naked child of five, having large ulcers and a lump
on the thigh, the sequel of the smallpox had two or three
months ago. A Chinaman brings the child of a friend; poor
lad, the smallpox had destroyed one eye and blinded the
other—so no hope, no remedy.”