One day, in 1849, the startling news reached the mission compound
that cholera had appeared in Bangkok. The plague spread very
rapidly; almost simultaneously it appeared everywhere in the city.
The very first notice of the presence of the pestilence that came
to the doctor was the news that the Siamese printer connected with
the Baptist mission had been stricken without any premonitory
symptoms and died within a few hours.
“As may be imagined consternation seized upon all classes.
The native doctors fled from their patients. Everywhere
propitiatory offerings were made to the spirits, the people
generally believing the pestilence to be caused by the
invasion of an army of cruel malicious demons who had come
invisibly to seize mankind and make them their slaves. And
in accordance with this theory the preventative most relied
on was a strand of cotton yarns, blessed by the Buddhist
priests, which, tied about the necks or wrists, it was
thought the invisible army could not pass. A cordon of such
yarn hung looped from battlement to battlement entirely
around the royal palace, a mile in circumference....
“Awakened at day break by a Chinaman in a floating house
across the river firing off crackers to propitiate his god.
Met a Chinaman well-dressed, carrying a square frame on
which little banners, red and white, some rice and fruit,
little new-made clay images of men and animals, with little
rags around them, red peppers, betel leaf and nuts ready
for chewing, the end of an old torch—all laid down at a
place where a dozen other such offerings to the spirits were
placed.”
With such preventives as the sole protection against the cholera
it is no wonder that the plague spread like wildfire. It was
no respecter of persons—a dowager in the palace, a prince of
Cambodia, a wealthy Hindu merchant were victims like the most
wretched natives. The mortality was so inclusive that in many a
house there were more dead than living; and in some instances the
remnant of a family would abandon the house with its horde of
corpses. Many of the mission servants and members of their families
were attacked, and some of these sent in great haste for Dr. House.
From early morning, all through the day, far into the night he
visited the sick.
Terrifying as the plague itself was, the fear of death was almost
eclipsed by the revolting disposal of the dead:
“You know it is the Siamese custom to burn their dead, but
so fearfully did deaths multiply that a shorter mode of
disposal was resorted to, and multitudes of corpses were
thrown without ceremony, as you would throw the carcass of a
dog into the river. These dead bodies could be seen any day
floating back and forth with the tide before our doors, in
all stages of putrefaction—on some of them crows perched,
picking away at their horrid feast.
“Go where you would through the streets, we would meet men
bearing away the dead, hastily tied up in a coarse mat. The
Siamese make loud lamentation at the moment of the death of
friends, and as one would pass along it was no uncommon thing
to hear the voice of wailing from this house and that. Once
on my way to see a patient, the voice of one crying in great
distress induced me to enter the little bamboo dwelling,
whence the cry proceeded; and there on the mat-covered
platform of a gambler’s shop (for such it was) sat a
middle-aged Chinaman with his head against the wall, sobbing
at a piteous rate. He took no notice of my entrance; but,
telling his only comrade that I was a doctor, I stepped up
to him to feel his pulse, but he was pulseless and his limbs
cold as stone—the hand of death was upon him. And I went on
my way leaving him all heedless of my coming, crying bitterly
as before.
“The most revolting spectacles were at the watts where
Siamese custom requires the dead to be brought for burning or
interment till burning is possible.... I have seen in one of
these gehennas hundreds of loathsome corpses in every stage
of putrefaction lying around unburied, unburned just where
the hirelings that brought them or their friends, too poor to
pay the expense of their burning, might throw them down—the
hot sun and the rain doing its work awfully.... My own eyes
have seen of such human carcasses, sixty thrown together in
one huge pile with sufficiency of wood and over thirty in a
smaller one near, all roasting, frying and burning to ashes
with a thick black smoke going up from the dreadful pyre;
with skull bones, legs half consumed, arms stiff in death
projecting on this side and that as the pile settled down,
till the men in charge with long poles would thrust and twist
them back into the blazing heap. All day long, from an area
of nearly an acre covered with the ashes of other freshly
burned victims of the pestilence, would be continually going
up the flames of scores of individual funeral piles; and this
not on the grounds of one temple only, but from a dozen here
and there about the city. And then when evening came, with
the night air would be wafted to us such an unmistakable odor
of burning flesh and singeing hair and bones.”
In the midst of his heroic labours, Dr. House awoke one morning
with what he felt to be the symptoms of the cholera, and for a
time he had dire thoughts of a certain and speedy death; but
instant resort to his effective prescription and a quiet rest in
bed for two days averted the threatened disease. Then he promptly
resumed attendance upon patients. When it is considered that
his professional services were sought in only a few instances,
chiefly among the friends of the mission servants, and that his
own aggressive zeal increased the number of patients treated by
him, the heroism of his conduct stands out in bold relief. Even
though there was no place of refuge for the missionaries, had it
been possible for them to flee, yet their greatest security was to
remain in such isolation as possible within their premises. But Dr.
House’s eagerness to save the lives of men that they might have a
further chance to hear the Gospel impelled him to risk his own life
to minister to every victim who would receive his services.
Concerning the prescription used during this epidemic, Dr. House
published a report of his experiments, while in America in 1865,
when there was prospect of an outbreak of Asiatic cholera in the
United States. At first he began with the common prescription
of the medical books of that date; then he turned to the use of
calomel in very large doses, with better results; later he says
that he hit upon the use of a mixture of spirits of camphor and
water taken every few minutes and found this to be a specific for
the disease, losing no patients under this treatment provided the
attack was taken in time.
In general, however, he was handicapped by two difficulties. The
disease made its attack so suddenly and developed so rapidly that
unless remedies were applied at the earliest possible moment
the end was fatal; but to many of the cases to which he came,
the summons of the physician had been delayed until there was
no hope of saving life. The other difficulty was equally fatal;
utter heedlessness to the directions. No amount of caution seemed
sufficient to secure the imperative attention to the prescription.
One patient, with a mild attack, he found to be dying when he
called later; and upon investigation found that she had taken the
medicine once when she should have taken it twenty times, but in
the meantime had resorted to the powders of a native doctor. But
in spite of these obstacles, Dr. House reported that of eight or
ten really severe cases in the households of the missionaries, none
died, and that he had records of seventy or more cures of persons
elsewhere dangerously attacked.
The mortality of this plague of ’49 was frightful. During the
climax of the epidemic deaths were occurring at the rate of fifteen
hundred a day in Bangkok. The river was thick with floating bodies,
and vessels coming in reported that they had counted hundreds of
corpses floated by the tide seven days out to sea. When the plague
had at last abated the official estimate of the number of deaths
in Bangkok and vicinity during the seven months was not fewer than
forty thousand.