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Show - 5 - hospital. There are still many of such cases and their care promises to be an important work throughout the coming winter. The great increase in expense of the tremendously augmented medical work was a source of worry to us all. We used up all our ether and had to use chloroform onlv, the treatment of relapsing fever required a great deal of neoarsphenamine; much emetine and yatren were used for our cases of dysentery, and the stock of other drugs became depleted. We used thirty dollars worth of bandage cloth a month, and had to buy forty new sheets. The northern soldiers, the famine stricken civilians, and many of the southerners had no money even to pay for their food. All our military out-patients, who, if they had paid our regular fees, would have brought us in more than ten dollars a day for several months, paid us nothing at all. Besides our ordinary fees are based on less than cost. We started out very badly in our search for funds. General Ch'u Yu P'u promised us $250 with which to heljt famine sufferers, if we could send a man to Tientsin to get it. Mr. Tuan. our pharmacist, was sent after it. All he received was rough treatment at the hands of sentries and clerks, and was told that since the general's soldiers were retreating the voucher could not be honored. So we lost the cost of his trip and he was cut off beyond the lines and could not return for six weeks. When the general himself cams through Lintsing on his retreat, (far ahead of his soldiers of course,) the local chamber of commerce extracted from him a promise to give them five thousand dollars for the transportation the}' had financed for his armies, and five hundred for the hospital. They sent a man to Tehchow to get the money and he returned the night of the battle at Lintsing. We were notified at ten that night that if we would send three men to the finance bureau we could have the money. There was constant firing in the streets, and although Dr. Cooke was eager to try it, Dr. Hsu insisted that no one should leave the compound that night, even for $50D! The next morning the money was gone; the place had been looted in the night. Gone also was the mayor with the $200 which he had already collected from charitable business men for the hospital. This series of losses was very disheartening. Later we had a little better luck, General Chu P'ei Teh gave us $250. His own men paid their hospital in-patient fees fairly well. Dr. Lin, whom I have mentioned as working with us in the hospital, managed to get the medical department to give us some of their stores when they packed up to go away. We |
