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Show At first no charges of any sort were made, some of the helpers urging that this would be the better way, leaving it to the patients to make such gifts as they chose. This plan brought goodly sized clinics each day,-but nothing for the cause of self-support. Free tickets brought a large number of children with ring-worm of the scalp, bright, black-eyed children, the torment of the gatekeeper's life because of their insatiable desire to flatten their noses on our window panes in their efforts to see into the foreign house. There were many other children, too, some such pitiful cases for which good food was the thing really needed. Dr. Tallmon kept condensed milk on hand for these babies. She kept cube sugar on hand, too, for the ones who were brave, and the ones who were good, and the ones who bewitched her, little round roly-poly ones with big brown eyes full of wonder. There were a number of cases of opium poisoning brought to the dispensary those first months, and there were long hours of fighting with death. One of these patients was a boy of fourteen who, angered by his father's punishment of him, had taken some of his father's opium. Unlike many of the cases, he was brought just as soon as the trouble was discovered, about six o'clock on a winter evening. There was a ransacking of storeroom for coffee and mustard. Bowl after bowl of the mustard water was given him to drink, and after each drink, he was marched back and forth across the chapel to keep him awake. Once as he showed signs of brightening up, they asked him if he liked to drink the mustard water. He grunted, then looking sidewise at the doctor said, "If I like it or not, I have to drink it." About midnight, they took him home, and in a few days he was about as usual. A child of eight was brought to the dispensary. His father and mother had quarrelled, and the mother had decided to take her life and that of the child. Match heads dissolved in alcohol was the poison used. One of the hard things that had to be done during these days was to turn away all operative cases, except minor ones and those of emergency. There was no hospital, and not even a room in the compound that could be used for that purpose, supposing it had seemed wise to admit sick strangers into our crowded court. Having no hospital, only patients who could walk to the dispensary or be carried in sedan chairs or in baskets, could be treated, except in cases of out calls when the Doctor went to the homes. In a very few cases, patients found rooms in the homes of friends or in the inns, and were brought to the Dispensary each day. The days were busy ones, each one with its interesting cases, and opportunities to help. We see more clearly now even than we did then, that it was all a preparation for the larger things that the Lord had in store for us. Page four |