Illustrations

FACING
PAGE
Rev. Samuel Reynolds House, M.D.[Title]
Sketch Map of Siam[34]
Harriet Pettit House[196]
Rev. Boon Tuan Boon Itt[230]

I
A SUDDEN PLUNGE INTO WORK

Dr. Samuel R. House did not have time nor need to “hang out a shingle” upon reaching Bangkok. He had been there only a few days—not long enough to unpack his goods—when “a message came from some great man by three trusty servants that a servant whom he loved very much had got angry and had half cut his hand off with a sword.”

This wound was not accidental but self-inflicted. It was a perverted result of a Siamese custom. In those days slavery prevailed in the country. Besides the war-captives who were cast into slavery, custom made it possible for any of the common people to be sold into servitude. If a man failed to pay a debt there were two alternatives before him, to be confined in one of the horrible jails until he discharged his obligation, or to sell himself or his wife or children into slavery to remain in that state until the accumulated value of the services should cancel the debt.

Only too often these debts were the result of gambling, a vice that was universally prevalent under license of the government. If the debtor was fortunate enough, he might sell the chosen victim to some lord who was willing to accept the services in pledge for a loan with which to pay the actual creditor. Such an arrangement was not altogether without its advantages, for many an improvident spendthrift had a comfortable living for himself and family assured by the better management of his lord. But once in servitude the victim was likely to be held in peonage indefinitely, because usury on the loan was liable to mount up faster than the value of services rendered.

It will readily be imagined that a man so improvident as to permit himself to fall into slavery would not be the most willing worker, and many would be the tricks of the lazy man to labour as little as possible. A rather common scheme to avoid an unpleasant duty or merely to spite the over-lord was to go to the extreme of inflicting upon self a wound that would incapacitate from work. Such was the nature of this first surgical case to which Dr. House was called.

The readiness with which this great man summoned a strange foreign doctor will be easily understood when it is known that for twelve years previous there had been an American physician in Bangkok. Since 1835 Rev. Daniel B. Bradley, M.D., representing the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (A B C F M), had been practising medicine and he had established a high reputation among all classes for western medicine and surgery. On account of the recent death of his wife, Dr. Bradley, with his young children, had sailed for home only a few weeks before the arrival of the new missionary.

When Dr. House set out for Siam he knew that Dr. Bradley was there and, having had no practical experience in his profession before leaving home, he looked forward to beginning his labours in association with one who not only was a skilled practitioner but who also knew the pathological conditions of the Siamese. When, upon arrival, Dr. House discovered that Dr. Bradley had withdrawn he felt some alarm at the absence of professional counsel, for he had a constitutional lack of self-confidence that caused him to feel a painful burden of responsibility in prescribing for patients. At the end of the first six months he wrote:

“Whatever seemed once likely to be my fate it is pretty certain now that there is more danger of my wearing out than of rusting out in this land. Have been on the run or occupied with visitors all the day and evening ... and my poor brain has, like its fellow labourer the heart, been compelled to go through with a great deal. What sights of human misery I am compelled to see. And to feel that I have not the power of skill to alleviate,—the iron enters my soul.”

Whatever may have been the first effect of being compelled to enter upon his profession alone, it is doubtful whether Dr. House ever perceived that this constraint was probably one means by which he gained the confidence of the Siamese within a very short period. For instead of being regarded either as a competitor or as an assistant to Dr. Bradley, he was accepted at the outset upon the reputation which his predecessor had so firmly established. It was this repute of western medicine which caused the great man to send so promptly for an unknown physician to treat the self-mutilated servant.

Quickly it became known among the people of Bangkok that another physician had arrived. The calls for treatment came in such numbers and with such importunity that in self-defense it was deemed wise to open the dispensary which had remained closed since the departure of Dr. Bradley, although there was only a limited supply of drugs on hand and the nearest base of supplies was London. The dispensary, or hospital as it was sometimes called, of which Dr. House thus suddenly found himself the proprietor and whole staff, was just one of the innumerable floating houses which lined the river banks of the Siamese capital. It is said that when this new capital was being established the common people were not allowed to build houses on land but permitted to live only in boats. At any rate, until modern times the larger portion of the population lived in floating houses.

These houses are simply constructed. A raft of bamboo forms the foundation, which is moored to the bank or to poles driven into the mud. Upon that foundation a one-story house of boards, thatched with palm leaves, is built. The house is, customarily, divided into three rooms. At either end, extending clear across the floor is a kitchen and a common bedroom. The space between is occupied by the common living-room and a porch. The living-room is fully open along the porch, from which it is separated by the rise of a step. Closely packed together in irregular rows, sometimes two or three deep, these houses are ranged along the banks of the river and of the many canals that form the Venetian highways of the city. The channel beneath the houses, kept from being stagnant by movement of the tide, served at once as the sewer and the family bath. Many of these houses are occupied as stores, with their merchandise exposed to the full view of the customer who does his shopping in a boat.

It was such a house as this that served the missionary as a hospital. But “hospital” is scarcely the proper word to use judged from the equipment, which consisted of a chair or two, a table for operations and a few mats for the patients. But the place had one great advantage—the open side exposed the work of the foreign doctor to the gaze of the curious natives who stopped while passing in their boats, and then related to their friends the wonders they had seen.

Here in this rude native shelter, until he gave up his profession, Dr. House applied himself with deep devotion and self-abandon to relieving the physical sufferings of the people. He placed himself wholly at their service, and made no discrimination between rank of those he served. Frequently he would not reach the dinner table till the middle of the afternoon, detained by the importuning patients; and he even laments that the people would not summon him in the night time in case of serious need.