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Show - 6 - got enough gauze and cotton to last us a year, and perhaps a hundred dollars worth of drugs. Later General Liu Chen Hua sent us $150, but we think that our care of his men involved an expense of $500. Quite lately General Sun, unwilling not to follow the precedent, has given $150 too, but it is not adequate, for we still are treating his men at a loss, and may for a long time to come. The Red Swastika Society gave us $50 to cover the care of the patients they brought to us. At one time we had quite a number of patients in private rooms in the hospital, and in the upstairs rooms of my house; and their fees, which cover the full cost of their care, were some help. The International Famine Relief came to our aid and gave US$500. Of course this money should be used only for the care of famine victims, and does not properly enter our general budget. We have enough left, still, to give free care to famine patients with remediable conditions for several months to come. On the whole we feel we have had a considerable loss which can not be made up unless we can get more contributions from military officials. This seems unlikely at this late date. (All figures are given in American money.) We had other difficulties too. During the battle a northern general sent his wife's belongings to the hospital and planned for her to take refuge there. Dr. Hsu refused her admission. The same day a rich man in the neighborhood sent literally a small cartload of money to the hospital for safekeeping, and Dr. Hsu had a great deal of trouble. The news of its being there would have spread about and the soldiers would have looted the whole place to get it. The night of the battle the mayor came and took refuge from the Nationalists in Dr. Hsu's house, and it was midnight before he could be persuaded to flee. When the incoming army heard about it they were restrained from executing Dr. Hsii only by the friendship which some local members of the Nationalist party had for him. Later on an alderman came to the hospital and demanded that Dr. Hsii buy fortv ounces of opium as the hospital's share of the forced sale in Lintsing of ten thousand dollars worth for the profit of the army. It was a dangerous thing to refuse, but Dr. Hsu took the chance. We had absences among the staff at critical periods. Miss Mu had cholera in June, and had hardly well recovered when she and Mrs. Tuan became sick with dysentery. Dr. Hsii was sick for a week with influenza and I had two illnesses totalling a loss of more than two weeks time. Mr. Chiao, our veteran employee, worked so hard that he got an exacerabation of his diabetes, and was absent from work for a month and a half. |
