This reaction from his former depression is natural under the circumstances. Remembering that Dr. House had had no independent practise before going to Siam, not even having performed a surgical operation alone, it is no wonder that the large and varied number of cases which presented themselves to his untested skill should challenge his small degree of self-confidence. But the instant other physicians are at hand, that mental burden seems to find a measure of support in their presence.
In the entry of the journal just quoted, however, there appears in the open what hitherto he had not even written in privacy—another and controlling reason for giving up his profession, viz.: the desire to give his whole time to direct dissemination of the Gospel. First he would devote himself to gaining proficiency in the language, for the chief purpose of evangelising. All through his journal in these early years it appears that his heart was more occupied with the healing of souls than of bodies. To him the hospital was a means of gaining intimate contact with people that he might tell them about Jesus.
Great was his chagrin, therefore, when he found that the arrival of two physicians was to give no immediate release. Dr. Bradley had returned with the intention of devoting himself to unattached practise, the A. B. C. F. M. having withdrawn its mission. Dr. Lane, who went out under the American Missionary Association, which for a time became the successor of the A. B. C. F. M., would not consent to take charge of the dispensary until he could command the language. There was nothing for Dr. House to do but to meet the exigency of the situation, and this he did by consenting to hold fixed hours at the floating dispensary but leaving to Dr. Bradley all outside calls. This arrangement allowed Dr. House half his time for the study of the language.
During this period of his connection with the hospital, in 1851, the smallpox broke out in Bangkok. Dr. House sent to Singapore for vaccine virus and at once began vaccinating any child whose parents he could induce to submit. For weeks he roamed about the city in his free hours soliciting patients for vaccination, explaining, entreating, warning, and almost hiring parents to permit him to inoculate their children. As one reads through the daily entries of the journal at this time, he receives an odd impression of this foreign doctor going about the city begging permission to administer an ounce of prevention. Back of this he had two very earnest desires. The first and immediate purpose, of course, was to save life and to prevent the dire results of the disease, evidences of which he saw everywhere. But the deeper motive was, by the demonstrated advantage of vaccination, to induce confidence in Western sciences in general and in the good motives of the missionaries in particular, so that the people would be ready to give more serious attention to the gospel message.
After eighteen months of this arrangement, Dr. Lane took charge of the dispensary and Dr. House formally abandoned his profession. During the four and a half years he had a record of seven thousand three hundred and two patients. With characteristic unselfishness, however, he consented for a time to substitute when the other physicians could not respond to calls; but soon he found that old patients were taking advantage of this consent by expressing a preference for him, so that the cases were gradually increasing. Finally he took a firm stand and declined to do any professional work, except to assist in surgery.
After Dr. House had altogether retired from his profession there appears in his journal a soliloquy which indicates that another motive had been subconsciously urging him to this course which, only after he had some months’ retrospect, had been permitted to come to expression:
“April 17, 1853. Is it not my duty to write a full expression of my feeling of my lost confidence in the healing art to the executive committee. I fear my parents would be tried when the faculty cast me off as I do their traditionary notions. Peace with them is better than war, perhaps. And yet perhaps I am doing very wrong by standing in the way of some other medical missionary who would be sent out if I was not believed to be a regular practitioner.
“But the last consideration does but little trouble my conscience, believing as I do from the bottom of my heart, that the more medicine given the worse the patient is off; and the less, the better.”
When once this idea gained the strength of expression he freely declared his opinion to his fellow missionaries. Then we find the curious anomaly of a graduate in medicine arguing against the use of drugs and his patients contending for them. However this was only a passing phase of “unbelief” in an extreme degree, and his seeming trend towards faith cure had its own reaction when, a few years later, we find him having recourse to physicians and drugs when unaided nature did not bring relief for a wife’s constantly aching head.