Home Missions in Action Part 8

"The transition which is now going on from the old days of hunting and fishing to the new period of commercial development throughout all Southeastern Alaska must have a profound effect upon the future of this people.

"More pupils applied for admission to the Sheldon Jackson School at Sitka this year than could possibly be accommodated. The industrial departments of this inst.i.tution have received careful attention.

The general claim of all this work is to give full practical and theoretical training, with a view to preparing the girls for the task of home-making and the boys as wage earners." [Footnote: Woman's Board of Home Missions, Presbyterian Church in U.S.A.]

This aim holds true also for the schools of all Protestant Missions in the far North.

Education is one of the expressions of the pa.s.sionate desire and purpose for betterment of those who gave their impress to our national life. Hamilton Mabie says: "Among Americans education is not only a discipline, a training; it is also a symbol. It means living an ampler life in a larger world."

The church-Home Missions--from the beginning has been the largest factor in the spread of schools and colleges--the greatest single educative force of this country.

The record of the Home Mission activities of the various denominations tells the story of the founding of academies and colleges, throughout the length and breadth of the land. In Kansas the State Normal School, State Agricultural College and the State University were founded by Home Missionaries.

Of the great Eastern universities and colleges it will be recalled that many were established by the Christian church. Among these are Harvard, Williams, Columbia, Princeton, Rutgers, Va.s.sar and many others.

Home Missions is still an active and deeply needed educative force. It brings the most powerful influence to the great groups of the neglected in our land, giving them visions of bettered physical conditions, yearnings after higher spiritual purposes, and determinations for a fuller realization of life in all its meaning, with the power of attaining these ideals.

IV

A HEALING FORCE

"During the spring months an epidemic of diphtheria and other infectious diseases visited a district of nine or ten villages in New Mexico. Many children succ.u.mbed to these diseases, the number of those who died being about one-tenth of the entire population of the district.

"No people in the world are kinder-hearted than the Mexican people. Everybody, even the children, visits the sick, and attends the _velorios_ (wakes) and funeral rites of the dead, without regard to the contagious character of the disease.

"This fatal custom is re-enforced by a fatalistic philosophy.

Whatever befalls one, he receives it with an '_Asi me toco_' (It was my fate). Whatever comes, he says:

"'_Es par Dios_' (It is of G.o.d). Each man has his appointed time to die. Until that time he is safe, and when that time comes nothing can save him. There is no such thing as contagion; disease strikes when and where G.o.d will. Medicine will cure, if it is the will of G.o.d. What the medicine may be is of little importance; a gla.s.s of water will cure as well as anything else, is a frequent saying, if it is the will of G.o.d.

"She, the missionary nurse, thereupon took up her station in the sick room, kept out the numerous callers, administered ant.i.toxin, and nursed the child back to life. She had saved the child. She gave the ant.i.toxin treatment in other cases where the parents were willing. She thus treated fifteen cases, losing only one."

"The healing of the seamless dress, Is by our beds of pain.

We touch Him in life's throng and press, And we are whole again."

Of all the compelling qualities that drew humanity irresistibly to Him, the compa.s.sion of the Christ was the most winning. This constraining love was the very heart of His Gospel.

The ma.s.ses of the suffering in His day knew only the ostracism of society because of their affliction.

The blind must sit idly through the glory of the day by the dusty road-side, begging bread from the pa.s.sing throng; the crippled lay in their misery and impotence at the gateways of the temples, sustained by the occasional coins tossed by the more fortunate as they hurried by. Nervous and mental sufferers must range through the wilds of deserts and waste places, or share the tombs where the lepers took refuge, being judged possessed of devils and fit only to be outcasts.

The pity of Christ, as well as His power to heal, disclosed a new force in the world-a love that could tenderly share the darkened outlook as well as minister to all the needs of such as these.

The compa.s.sion of the Christ reached and lifted the hopeless heart of suffering humanity as His touch soothed the torturing agony of disease and brought hope and healing into a world hardened to pain.

It released a power the beneficence and helpfulness of which increase year by year as science adds to its ability, and a growing sense of responsibility widens its use.

The Christian era ushered in the day of hope for the sick-poor--a day that has progressed steadily, to an ever-enlarging vision of what was in the heart of Christ for the healing of the nations.

Ancient writers tell us of some efforts in pre-Christian days toward the inst.i.tutional care of the sick. The earliest records mention the treatment of the sick in the Greek temples of Aesculapius in 1134 B.C.; these were probably not for the poor. Seneca very much later refers to the infirmaries established by the Romans for the well-to-do cla.s.ses.

In 226 B.C., the Buddhists in India are credited with some small efforts to provide for the sick poor, as are also later the fire worshipers of Persia.

"When the example and teachings of Christ began to bear fruit, and when Jerusalem and the roads approaching it began to be crowded with pilgrims, special accommodations for the use of the sick were established. When monasteries and convents followed, they too, provided for the sick."

From the Roman word "hospitalia" (apartment set apart for guests), our word hospital is derived.

In the writings of St. Jerome, who established several, the word "hospital" is first used for a curative inst.i.tution.

It is of interest to know that the oldest hospital now in use in Europe, the Hotel Dieu, was founded in Paris, in 600 A. D. by the Bishop of Paris.

All the early hospitals were church inst.i.tutions, and the wards were cl.u.s.tered about the chapel, as may be seen to-day in the arrangement of beautiful St. Luke's hospital in New York City.

Thus we find that religion, not medicine, gave birth to hospitals.

An accelerating influence in their growth came through the necessities of war, which threw large numbers of the injured and suffering upon communities quite unprepared to receive and minister to them.

It was to meet such a need that the first hospital was established in the United States on Manhattan Island in 1658.

The "New Netherland Register" says "This hospital was established at the request of Surgeon Hendricksen Varrevauger for the reception of sick soldiers--who had been previously billeted on private families."

In 1679 the hospital consisted of five houses.

Early in the eighteenth century pest-houses were established at Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, at New York, and Charleston, and in 1717, a hospital for contagious diseases was built in Boston.

The teachings and writings of Benjamin Franklin were of marked importance in promoting sanitary science and in securing the building of the first chartered hospital in the United States, which was erected in Philadelphia in 1755. The record shows four hundred and thirty-five patients treated in this hospital in the year 1775.

That year was also marked by the building of the New York Hospital, which was destroyed by fire almost as soon as completed, and rebuilt in 1791. It owed its origin to two professors of King's College (now Columbia), which at that time was a church inst.i.tution.

The necessities of war have from early times had a marked effect upon the development of hospitals. Dr. James Tilton, in presenting recommendations to Congress in 1781, says of his experience in the Revolution: "It would be shocking to humanity to relate the history of our general hospitals in the years 1777 and 1779, when they swallowed up at least one-half of our army, owing to the system of placing nearly all the sick of the army in the general hospitals, where crowds and infection wrought a fearful mortality, and where more surgeons died in the American service in proportion to their number than officers of the line--a strong evidence that infection is more dangerous than weapons of war."

The death rate of the English and French soldiers was so fearful, and the neglect and condition of the wounded men so appalling in the Crimean war (1854), that the entire English nation was aroused.

It was a woman, Florence Nightingale, who was sent out by the nation and given full authority to act in the emergency upon which hung the fate of the armies.

Not only did this n.o.ble woman, with her band of thirty-seven nurses, bring healing instead of death in those army hospitals, but she inst.i.tuted reform in sanitation which was adopted by hospitals throughout the world.

To her also humanity owes the inestimable boon of the trained nurse of education, refinement and ability. Before Florence Nightingale gave herself and initiated the movement for the training of young women of standing as nurses, such work had been left to the rough, uncouth, and often low-lived men and women, of whom the unspeakable Sairey Gamp, immortalized by Charles d.i.c.kens, is a fitting type.

As the Christian church was the first to give healing to the needy, so it has carried this ministry wherever in the world its banners have been set up.