A Half Century Among the Siamese and the Lāo: An Autobiography

by Daniel McGilvary

It was a very auspicious beginning. I knew that neither the Siamese nor the Lāo trusted the Prince very thoroughly; yet every time that I saw him it seemed to me that I might trust him. At any rate, I did not then look forward to the scenes that we were to pass through before three years were gone.

After the first curiosity wore off, many of those who came to our sālā were patients seeking medical treatment. The title “Maw” (doctor) followed me from Bangkok, where all missionaries, I believe, are still so called. This name itself often excited hopes which, of course, were doomed to disappointment. To the ignorant all diseases seem equally curable, if only there be the requisite skill or power. How often during those first five years I regretted that I was not a trained physician and surgeon! My only consolation was that it was not my fault. When my thoughts were first turned towards missions, I consulted the officers of our Board on the wisdom of taking at least a partial course in preparation for my work. But medical missions had not then assumed the importance they since have won. In fact, just then they were at a discount. The Board naturally thought that medical study would be, for me at least, a waste of time, and argued besides that in most mission fields there were English physicians. But it so happened that eleven years of my missionary life have been spent in stations from one hundred to five hundred miles distant from a physician. So, if any physician who reads this narrative is inclined to criticise me as a quack, I beg such to remember that I was driven to it—I had to do whatever I could in the case of illness in my own family; and for pity I could not turn away those who often had nothing but superstitious charms to rely on. It was a comfort, moreover, to know that in spite of inevitable disappointments, our practice of medicine made friends, and possibly enabled us to maintain the field, at a time when simply as Christian teachers we could not have done so. Even Prince Kāwilōrot himself conceded so much when, after forbidding us to remain as missionaries, he said we might, if we wished, remain to treat the sick.

In such a malarial country, there is no estimating the boon conferred by the introduction of quinine alone. Malarial fevers often ran on season after season, creating an anæmic condition such that the least exertion would bring on the fever and chills again. The astonishment of the people, therefore, is not surprising when two or three small powders of the “white medicine,” as they called it, taken with much misgiving, would cut short the fever, while their own medicines, taken by the potful for many months, had failed. The few bottles of quinine which it had been thought sufficient to bring with me, were soon exhausted. The next order was for forty four-ounce bottles; and not till our physicians at length began to order by the thousand ounces could a regular supply be kept on hand. I have often been in villages where every child, and nearly every person, young or old, had chills and fever, till the spleen was enlarged, and the whole condition such that restoration was possible only after months of treatment.

There was another malady very common then—the goitre—which had never been cured by any remedy known to the Lāo doctors. I soon learned, however, that an ointment of potassium iodide was almost a specific in the earlier stages of the disease. That soon gave my medicine and my treatment a reputation that no regular physician could have sustained; for the people were sure that one who could cure the goitre must be able to cure any disease. If I protested that I was not a doctor, it seemed a triumphant answer to say, “Why, you cured such a one of the goitre.” Often when I declined to undertake the treatment of some disease above my skill, the patient would go away saying, “I believe you could, if you would.”

One other part of my medical work I must mention here, since reference will be made to it later. The ravages of smallpox had been fearful, amounting at times to the destruction of a whole generation of children. The year before our arrival had witnessed such a scourge. Hardly a household escaped, and many had no children left. I was specially interested to prevent or to check these destructive epidemics, because the Prince had seen the efficacy of vaccination as practised by Dr. Bradley in Bangkok, and because I felt sure that what he had seen had influenced him to give his consent to our coming. One of the surest ways then known of sending the virus a long distance was in the form of the dry scab from a vaccine pustule. When once the virus had “taken,” vaccination went on from arm to arm. Dr. Bradley sent me the first vaccine scab. It reached me during the first season; and vaccination from it ran a notable course.

The Karens and other hill-tribes are so fearful of smallpox that when it comes near their villages, they all flee to the mountains. Smallpox had broken out in a Lāo village near a Karen settlement. The settlement was at once deserted. Meanwhile the news of the efficacy of vaccination had reached the Lāo village, and they sent a messenger with an elephant to beg me to come and vaccinate the entire community. Two young monks came also from an adjoining village, where the disease was already raging. These two I vaccinated at once, and sent home, arranging to follow them later when their pustules should be ripe. From them I vaccinated about twenty of the villagers. During the following week the Karens all returned, and in one day I vaccinated one hundred and sixty-three persons. It was a strange sight to see four generations all vaccinated at one time—great-grandfathers holding out their withered arms along with babes a month old.

Success such as this was naturally very flattering to one’s pride; and “pride goeth before a fall.” I had kept the Prince informed of the success of my attempt, and naturally was anxious to introduce vaccination into the palace. The patronage of the palace would ensure its introduction into the whole kingdom. Having a fine vaccine pustule on the arm of a healthy white infant boy, I took him to the palace to show the case to the Prince’s daughter, and to her husband, who was the heir-apparent. They had a little son of about the same age. The parents were pleased, and sent me with the child to the Prince. As soon as he saw the pustule, he pronounced it genuine, and was delighted. His younger daughter had lost a child in the epidemic of the year before, and the family was naturally very anxious on the subject. He sent me immediately to vaccinate his little grandson.

I returned to the palace of the son-in-law, and very carefully vaccinated the young prince on whom so many hopes were centred. I watched the case daily, and my best hopes seemed realized. The pustules developed finely. All the characteristic symptoms appeared and disappeared at the proper times. But when the scab was about to fall off, the little prince was taken with diarrhœa. I felt sure that a little paregoric or some other simple remedy would speedily set the child right, and I offered to treat the case. But half a dozen doctors—most of them “spirit-doctors”—were already in attendance. The poor child, I verily believe, was dosed to death. So evident was it that the unfortunate outcome could not have been the result of vaccination, that both the parents again and again assured me that they entertained no such thought. But all diseases—as was then universally believed among the Lāo—are the result of incurring the displeasure of the “spirits” of the family or of the clan. The “spirits” might have taken umbrage at the invasion of their prerogative by vaccination.

No doubt some such thought was whispered to the Prince, and it is not unnatural that he should at least have half believed it. In his grief at the loss of his grandson, it is easy to see how that thought may have fanned his jealousy at the growing influence of the missionaries.

No year ever passed more rapidly or more pleasantly than that first year of the mission. We were too busy to be either lonesome or homesick, although, to complete our isolation, we had no mails of any sort for many months. Our two children, the one of three and the other of six years, were a great comfort to us. When we left Bangkok it was understood that a Mr. C. of the Borneo Company was to follow us in a month on business of their teak trade. He had promised to bring up our mail. So we felt sure of getting our first letters in good time. Since he would travel much faster than we, it was not impossible that he might overtake us on the way. But April, May, and June passed, and still no word of Mr. C. or of the mails he was bringing. In July we received a note from him, with a few fragments of our long looked-for mail. He had been attacked by robbers below Rahêng, himself had received a serious wound, and his boat had been looted of every portable object, including our mail-bag. Fortunately the robbers, finding nothing of value to them in the mail, had dropped as they fled some mutilated letters and papers, which the officers in pursuit picked up, and which Mr. C. forwarded to us. Otherwise we should have had nothing. We could at least be devoutly thankful that we had traversed the same river in safety.