Home Missions in Action Part 9

Throughout this land, from Alaska to the Gulf, may be found hospitals established by the Christian church--the greater number the product of Home Missions.

The Home Mission nurse, or deaconess-nurse, is an important factor in connection with nearly every mission station.

In lumber sections, in mining camps, on Alaskan river boats, in far back mountain settlements, in the patios of Porto Rico and our island possessions, with the Negroes of the South, the Orientals of the Pacific coast, the backward peoples, the Mexicans and Indians, the depressed of our great cities, at the gates of the nation--wherever the cry of human need in our land has been met by Home Missions, there these ministers of healing have carried their blessed service.

If the nurse, or deaconess, is to fulfill her mission to the sick, she must have training. There must be deaconess homes and hospital's for this, where also the sick poor who can rarely be properly cared for in their dark, crowded, unsanitary homes may find help. In answer to this double need, deaconess hospitals have been established.

"The deaconess nurse goes into the homes of the poor, bringing the skilled touch of the nurse and the loving heart of Christian womanhood to the service of the neediest. Contagion has no terrors for her; Filth, vermin, and dangerously unsanitary conditions are matters of every-day occurrence. No service so quickly opens the heart to good influences as that which comes in hours of deepest need and helplessness, to lead the heart through human tenderness to the Source of all goodness and love. Whole families have been won to Christ through the services of a Christian nurse.

"Babies first! The wee folk, doomed to the ill's to which tenement life is heir, must have safe food; a luxury unattainable, or it would be if the House did not have a dispensary from which over a thousand bottles of milk, modified by the doctor's prescription for each individual case, are given out each month.

"It is worth while to visit the Medical Mission at 36 Hull Street, Boston. There will be found a dental clinic, opened in the spring of 1912, and the school nurses send the children there to get acquainted with the pleasures of the dental chair, and, most important of all, to learn how to care for their teeth. Then there are the orthopedic, and the regular surgical and medical clinics.

"Soon after lunch I went with a nurse to make call's on a few of the out-patients. We read of dark stairways, but I had no conception of such dark and crooked ways. Why the children do not have broken limbs all the time I cannot imagine.

"We entered three places--I suppose the people who live in them call them homes; each has two or three rooms, with one or more beds in every room, even the kitchen. If there were three rooms, one was window-less. A mother, with a three weeks' old baby, was scrubbing the stone steps. The babies were bound up like papooses, and the nurse had to unwind the little living mummies to care for them.

"Later, returning to the Mission, we attended the 'Italian Mothers' Club.' How they luxuriate in their weekly treat! They sing, sew on garments which are theirs when completed, listen to talks from visitors and workers, and always close the hour with the Lord's prayer. Children cling to their skirts or lie in their laps as they discuss their personal problems, and all look up when spoken to with the never-failing Italian courtesy.

"Some of the year's statistics are a revelation as to the work done: Dispensary treatments, indoor, 12,522; outdoor, 1536; new patients, 4649; operations, 329; obstetrical cases, 151; calls made by nurses, 3075.

"In one week at the morning and evening clinics, ninety-seven patients were treated at the dispensary besides the vaccination cases." [Footnote: Woman's Home Missionary Society, Methodist Episcopal Church.]

"She was an epileptic. The sadness that is bound up in the word only those who have experienced it can know. She worked with her needle as long as she could. At the warning cry of one of the terrible attacks, her mother tenderly cared for her.

"'There is only one thing that rests on my heart,' said the mother, as she lay on her death-bed. 'I am satisfied about everything else and ready to go, if only there was some friend to care for my poor epileptic girl.'

"A friend promised to place the daughter in the Lutheran Home for Epileptics, and the mother died praising G.o.d for those who, in following His Son, had provided for those who were afflicted."

[Footnote: The Women's Missionary Society, Lutheran General Council.]

Nowhere is the twofold service of the Mission hospital more needed than among the Negroes of the South, where the unsanitary conditions in and about the homes, and the widespread ignorance of the simplest laws of health are so p.r.o.nounced. A number of the Boards maintain hospitals providing care for the sick Negroes and the training of colored girls as nurses for their own people.

Among these MacVicar Hospital is outstanding in the character and efficiency of its service.

This hospital is a department of Spelman Seminary, maintained by the Woman's American Baptist Home Missionary Society at Atlanta, Georgia. Its workers are members of the school faculty and they are paid from the school fund. A small charge, to outside patients, is made.

The trustees have set aside one-half of the annual income of a small endowment in order to provide free operations and treatment for those to whom even a small payment is impossible.

Negro women and children from the city have the privileges of the hospital, and patients also come from various parts of the state for medical and surgical treatment.

The hospital is able to take adequate care of the health of Spelman's large family of six hundred people. When smallpox is in the city, vaccination day is held and every boarder, day pupil, teacher, and workman must report to the hospital.

The doctors from the city co-operate in the work at MacVicar, giving their services freely.

One of the most valuable features of the inst.i.tution is the training course for nurses, to which those in training must give their entire time for three years. They must have completed the eighth grade in school before beginning.

Of those in dire need of physical as well as spiritual regeneration in our land are the Mexicans, of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, California, and the large colonies in some of the cities of Texas.

The prevailing ignorance, untidiness, and superst.i.tion of the homes call insistently for more missionary nurses to teach cleanliness, sanitation, and economy, and the training of mothers in the care of their little ones and in the preparation of wholesome food.

The latest report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs states that the Government maintains fifty-one hospitals (six additional are under construction), with a combined capacity of 1432 patients, to care for a population of 331,250 persons. In view of these figures, it is not difficult to realize the urgent need of the field workers and nurses in connection with Christian Missions among Indians.

The report shows also the estimated number of 21,980 Indians suffering from tuberculosis, and 35,769 afflicted with the highly contagious eye disease, trachoma. The death rate per thousand among the Indians last year was 30.76. The percentage of deaths due to tuberculosis was 31.83, while the birthrate was 38.79 per thousand.

The Commissioner of Indian Affairs says:

"I am fully aware of the fact that to perpetuate the Indian race, the inroads of tuberculosis must be stayed. To do this it is essential that better sanitary conditions be inst.i.tuted in the Indian homes, and cleanliness, better ventilation, and sufficient and nourishing food be secured."

Realizing the importance of these matters, a study has been made of the physical conditions of the government Indian schools. An effort has been made to detect incipient tuberculosis and trachoma and segregate and treat those infected, so that healthy families may not be infected through the return of a child who has been infected at school. Regular talks are given to the children on sanitary matters.

There is vital necessity for more hospitals to care for the children and other members of the family in the early stages of disease.

Fully sixty per cent of the Indians under the supervision of the Indian service are still entirely dependent upon the government for medical a.s.sistance. The medical staff employed by the government comprises one hundred and twenty-eight regular physicians, devoting their entire time, and fifty-nine contract physicians giving part time service.

A unique and most helpful feature of the Indian Missions maintained by the Women's Board of Domestic Missions of the Reformed Church in America are the separate buildings known as lodges, set apart for the use of the Indians.

Here the specially needy sick find care and shelter until other provision can be made for them.

Here when the journey has been long, or necessity compels, mothers bring their little ones for rest, or to spend the night.

Young girls pressed by temptation or needing shelter can find security and safety at the lodge.

The lodge sewing machines and laundry facilities are greatly appreciated by the women who seek the help of such conveniences from time to time.

Here mothers are taught many helpful lessons in sanitation, the care of babies, and the preparation of food for the sick.

Occasionally Indian feasts and celebrations connected with the Mission are held or prepared in the lodge by the Indians themselves under the supervision of a worker.

The lodge matron knows the Indians and how to help them, and is loved and trusted by them because they realize her sympathy and appreciate what her kind hands do for them in the care of the sick, and often, also, in the preparation of their dead for burial.

Many a sick and needy one at the lodge has turned from the old Indian road of darkness, pain, and dread, and found rest, and help, and light in the Jesus Way.

"Here in Alaska the hospital boat was launched this summer, and will be of great use.

"One of the important results of my visit, I trust, will be a report of a medical survey made of the natives in Haines and Kluckwan.

A number of estimates of the amount of tubercular and other infectious diseases among these people have been made, but, so far as my knowledge goes, no careful, exhaustive, complete medical survey of any one village has ever been made, or put into suitable form for presentation. I fear that this will disclose a most appalling condition (unless it should prove that the estimates. .h.i.therto available have been very carelessly made). Whatever it may show, I feel sure that it will help us in presenting to the United States Government the medical needs of these people in such a way as to compel the serious attention of Congress, and result in an appropriation annually for the introduction of such sanitary measures throughout Alaska as will eventually eradicate the dreadful source of contagion now existing.