WITH THE PATIENTS
There were bits of humour now and then amidst the procession of human tragedies.
“While feeling the pulse of the patient and holding my watch to count its beat, another man sitting by begged me to feel his, and after I had counted it he gravely asked me ‘in just how many years after this he would die.’”
Some of the humour was grim humour indeed; for one day he was hastily summoned only to find that the supposed patient was a corpse. Humourous from one point of view but quite perturbing for a physician was the innocent disregard for the directions left with medicines; indeed the doctor could never tell whether the failure of a prescription was due to the ineffectiveness of the drugs or to the failure of the patient to take the medicine as prescribed, for he found that the patient was liable to take the whole potion at once or just as liable to have another member of the family take the remedy vicariously.
Quite frequently, when the callers from a distance came to see him, they made the parting request for medicine to take home with them, and thought it altogether needless for the doctor to know what disease they expected to use it for. Pathetic was the case of the cholera patient consumed with fever who begged the doctor to give “medicine to cure the desire for drinking water.” Even more simple-minded was the old man who came to inquire if he could be healed if he “wyed” to Jesus,—that is to make the reverential bow of worship customarily accorded to the image of Buddha. Then there was the deaf man who came back to report that he had read “the Christian book of magic” and that it had failed to cure him.
Not the least perplexing of these absurd situations was the difficulty of securing necessary permission to administer the medicines even after the doctor had been especially summoned:
“The poor woman who lay on a mattress bolstered up was in great distress evidently—and I soon found that no time was to be lost. I shall never forget how piteously she turned her anxious eyes towards me as she faintly said, ‘Can you heal me?’ I recommend certain treatment. Nothing could be done, however, till the matter had been submitted to the Praklang. So a messenger was despatched, His Excellency again aroused from his nap;—and what a message brought back: The application of hot cloths would be permitted, but the more effective treatment proposed was something new—he did not know—he could not consent to it. Thinking then of another mode of treating the case and not dreaming but that this I might venture to give—but no; this prescription must be reported to headquarters before it could be administered. Again a messenger was despatched. The answer came back: we must wait to see what a hot fomentation would do; if this did any good then the prescription might be tried.”
II
“THE MAN WITH THE GENTLE HEART”
“This day thirteen years ago, while a just-arrived student at Dartmouth College, it pleased my sovereign Maker to manifest His everlasting love to me by inclining my heart to choose Him as my portion, and His service as my reward.”
Such is his salutatory in the service of God, as recorded by Samuel R. House, in his journal under date of Feb. 22, 1848. He had been in Siam less than a year; long enough however for the novelty of his situation to abate a little so that he had time to reflect. Reflecting, he sees how that youthful dedication was—so far as he was consciously concerned—the beginning of the lines of life that led him to Siam.
Four years later, on the anniversary of his arrival in Siam, contemplating the fruitlessness of those years and ready to incriminate himself for “a culpable ignorance of the language,” he again writes:
“How different doubtless am I regarded at home by over-esteeming friends. How false a biography would that be, some of them would write.... Let no one eulogise such a character, such a worthless, unworthy life as mine. If a Christian hope be the joy of my life, by the grace of God I am what I am; but my waywardness, my inefficiency is all my own.”
The cause of this despondency was not within himself. It was the miasma arising from the spiritual decay around him. But as none liveth unto himself, so none dieth to himself. The example of such persistent faith belongs to the church; and it has too great a value for the living to allow the judgment of a passing despondency to prevail.
At length comes the valedictory. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of permanent work in Siam by the Presbyterian Church (U. S. A.) in 1897, Dr. House wrote to a friend:
“And now in my eightieth year, sole survivor of that little band, I feel it a privilege indeed to look back and see what God hath wrought since that day of small beginnings. Verily the little one has become a thousand—yes thousands. I am sure you, my friend, will congratulate me on being yet alive this blessed day of an abundant ingathering from that long barren mission field. How the loved ones that have entered into rest would rejoice if they could see how their patience of hope and labour and love have not been in vain in the Lord. There are many in heaven to raise the song of jubilee with them, even there.”
From that early dedication of self to God while in college, through the years “cast down but not destroyed,” to the golden jubilee—what a strain of human effort, what a magnificent persistence of faith, what a glory of hope realized!