One of the great evils existing upon the islands is the charlatanism practiced upon the ignorant.
“Traveling doctors,” who never saw a materia medica, infest the country and sell every imaginable cure, as well as cures which are not imaginable.
Removing lizards, toads and various other things from various parts of the body is one form and perhaps the highest type of medical fraud. The “doctor” will declare the patient “conjured,” and at once contract to remove the offending spirit, the usual fee being five dollars; in 90 per cent of such cases, he takes a lien on a cow, horse, or pig, and finally, by foreclosure, gets the animal, for by the present unjust system of trial justices, almost any verdict may be rendered.
I was asked to see a case one evening which was described to be a sore arm. It was four miles distant, but the husband of the patient had driven over for me because “de pain is powerful bad, sir.”
I found the woman sitting in a chair, her right arm resting on a barrel that had been rolled in for the occasion, an immense poultice of bread, meal, feathers and numerous other ingredients wrapped around the arm, the whole weighing about three pounds. As I lifted the cloth I found a mass of the ordinary ground worms dead upon the surface. With a cry of pleasure, the couple said, “Dat ’em! Dat ’em! He tole us dat arm full of worm and sho’ ’nuf he come out.”
Could anything appeal more piteously; could it be more pathetic? Think, at our very doors exists such barbarity, while each year thousands upon thousands of dollars go as many miles to help a people far beyond some of the people of our own country.
I removed the poultice, washed the arm, and found a compound communicated fracture of both bones of the forearm.
Who could stand by such a picture with an unmoved heart or an unmoistened eye! Tell her the error? No; only asked her not to let strangers treat her when she was ill and advised her to go to some doctor she knew in the future.
Dried green peas coated with sugar was one of the staple drugs, and others as useless, but not as harmless.
I found there a grateful people. They would bring eggs, chickens, berries and all kinds of gifts, including money, and when told that the Red Cross never received pay for its work, it was hard for them to understand; but as weeks passed, they learned it and tried to help each other as they had been helped. On the first of June the medical distributing department of the American National Red Cross was closed and all the officers were ordered to headquarters, where the field was closed and the president and staff left for Charleston, to repack and ship to the northern district, June 7, 1894. Then came a few weeks at the Charleston Headquarters. Through the courtesy of Mr. Kaufman, his long warehouse (150 feet by 40 feet) was at the disposal of the Red Cross from the time it received the Charleston Committee to the close of its field, with privilege of occupying it as long as they wished.