A Story of the Red Cross; Glimpses of Field Work

by Clara Barton

While this was in progress, a dispatch came to me at Constantinople from Dr. Shepard of Aintab, whose tireless hands had done the work of a score of men, saying that fevers, both typhoid and typhus, of the most virulent nature, had broken out in Arabkir, two or three days north of Harpoot; could I send doctors and help? Passing the word on to Dr. Hubbell at Harpoot, prompt and courageous action was taken by him. It is something to say that from a rising pestilence with a score of deaths daily, in five weeks, himself and his assistants left the city in a normally healthful condition, the mortality ceasing at once under their care and treatment.

During this time the medical relief for the cities of Zeitoun and Marash was in charge of Dr. Ira Harris, of Tripoli, who reached there March 18th. The report of the consuls had placed the number of deaths from the four contagious diseases at one hundred a day. This would be quite probable when it is considered that ten thousand were smitten with the prevailing diseases, and that added to this were the crowded condition of the patients, the thousands of homeless refugees who had flocked from their forsaken villages, the lack of all comforts, of air, cleanliness, and a state of prolonged starvation.

Dr. Harris's first report to me was that he was obliged to set the soup kettles boiling and feed his patients before medicine could be retained. My reply was a draft for two hundred liras (something over eight hundred dollars) with the added dispatch: "Keep the pot boiling; let us know your wants." The further reports show from this time an astonishingly small number of deaths. The utmost care was taken by all our expeditions to prevent the spread of the contagion and there is no record of its ever having been carried out of the cities, where it was found, either at Zeitoun, Marash, or Arabkir. Lacking this precaution, it might well have spread throughout all Asia Minor, as was greatly feared by the anxious people.

On the twenty-fourth of May, Dr. Harris reported the disease as overcome. His stay being no longer needed, he returned to his great charge in Tripoli, with the record of a medical work and success behind him never surpassed if ever equaled. The lives he had saved were enough to gain Heaven's choicest diadem. Never has America cause to be more justly proud and grateful than when its sons and daughters in foreign lands perform deeds of worth like that.

The closing of the medical fields threw our entire force into the general relief of the vilayet of Harpoot, which the relieving missionaries had well named their "bottomless pit."

The apathy to which the state of utter nothingness, together with their grief and fear, had reduced the inhabitants, was by no means the smallest difficulty to be overcome. Here was realized the great danger felt by all—that of continued alms-giving, lest they settle down into a condition of pauperism, and thus finally starve, from the inability of the world at large to feed them. The presence of a strange body of friendly working people, coming thousands of miles to help them, awakened a hope and stimulated the desire to help themselves.

It was a new experience that these strangers dared to come to them. Although the aforetime home lay a heap of stone and sand, and nothing belonging to it remained, still the land was there, and when seed to plant the ground and the farming utensils and cattle were brought to work it with, the faint spirit revived, the weak, hopeless hands unclasped, and the farmer stood on his feet again.

When the cities could no longer provide the spades, hoes, plows, picks and shovels, and the crude iron and steel to make these was purchased and taken to them, the blacksmith found again his fire and forge and traveled weary miles with his bellows on his back. The carpenter again swung his hammer and drew his saw. The broken and scattered spinning-wheels and looms from under the storms and débris of winter again took form and motion, and the fresh bundles of wool, cotton, flax, and hemp in the waiting widow's hand brought hopeful visions of the revival of industries which should not only clothe but feed.

At length, in early June, the great grain-fields of Diarbekir, Farkin, and Harpoot valleys, planted the year before, grew golden and bowed their heavy spear-crowned heads in waiting for the sickle. But no sickles were there, no scythes, not even knives. It was a new and sorry sight for our full-handed American farming men to see those poor, hard Asiatic hands trying, by main strength, to break the tough straw or pull it by the roots. This state of things could not continue, and their sorrow and pity gave place to joy when they were able to drain the cities of Harpoot and Diarbekir of harvest tools, and turned the work of all the village blacksmiths on to the manufacture of sickles and scythes, and of flint workers upon the rude threshing machines.

They have told me since their return that the pleasantest memories left to them were of those great valleys of golden grain, bending and falling before the harvesters, men and women, each with the new, sharp sickle or scythe, the crude threshing planks, the cattle trampling out the grain, and the gleaners in the rear as in the days of Abraham and Moab. God grant that somewhere among them was a kind-hearted king of the harvest who gave orders to let some sheaves fall.