The people picked up the idea that lime was a mysterious agent in preventing disease, so it was not uncommon to see a handful of it scattered, a few grains here and there, along the edges of some of the filthiest ditches, or a gourd whitewashed with lime hanging by the door as a sort of charm to drive away cholera.
Koreans call it “the rat disease,” believing that cramps are rats gnawing and crawling inside the legs, going up till the heart is reached; so they offer prayers to the spirit of the cat, hang a paper cat on the house door, and rub their cramps with a cat’s skin. They offered prayers and sacrifices in various high places to the heavens—Hananim—and some of the streets in infected districts were almost impassable on account of ropes stretched across, about five feet high, at intervals of about every twenty-five feet, to which paper prayers were attached. As my coolies, trying to pass along with my chair, broke one of these, I could not help admonishing the owner who came to its rescue, “Better put them up a little higher.”
Aye, put them up higher, poor Korean brother, they are far too near the earth! One of the most pathetic sights in connection with this plague were these poor, wind-torn, rain-bedraggled, paper prayers, hanging helplessly everywhere, the offering of blind superstition to useless dumb gods who can neither pity nor hear.
“They reach lame hands of faith and grope
And gather dust and chaff.”
Early in August it was decided, as the plague seemed on the increase, to fill the “Shelter” with cholera patients, and Dr. Avison assigned to Dr. Wells, Mr. Underwood and myself the supervision and care of this place.
The “Shelter,” situated on a good high site outside the walls, with a number of comfortable rooms, with the possibility of hot floors (which proved an unspeakable benefit to the poor cold, pulseless sick), seemed an ideal place for the purpose. It was not very large, it is true, but as most of our patients were either quickly cured or quickly succumbed, we were able to receive a goodly number. Mr. Underwood and Dr. Wells worked indefatigably, stocking it with everything obtainable which could be of use.
My husband arranged for a corps of voluntary native nurses. As the only missionaries available were at work elsewhere, and we had seen too much of hired native official nurses, he decided to ask some of his Christian helpers to do this service for the love of Christ. Cholera is a loathsome disease, only love makes it easy to nurse faithfully and tenderly these poor afflicted creatures, without overwhelming disgust.
Some of the men thus approached belonged to the scholar and gentlemen class, who had never done manual work of any kind, and at first they hesitated. However, they at last decided to undertake the task, and with willing hands and a little training, they turned out to be very satisfactory nurses, faithful and devoted, never shirking the most difficult and repelling work. Every evening a service of prayer and song was held in the central court of the Shelter, where all who were conscious could hear, and we believe that the blessing on that work came in answer to these united prayers, and the public acknowledgment of absolute dependence in God. Here, too, the workers gained new enthusiasm and the strength born of faith and hope.
Dr. Wells’ brilliant management deserves the highest praise. The necessity of caring for my little one, lying sick five miles away, allowed me only alternate nights of service at the hospital, so the labor for the other two members of our trio was severe, but while the need lasted strength was given.
Unspeakably pathetic were many of the scenes we were forced to witness. One poor woman, only that day widowed, with three little ones to care for, was brought in cold and almost pulseless. We spent the night trying to save this poor mother. Early in the morning her eldest, a dear little fellow of eleven, came to watch with and take care of her. To see the anxious little face (a child’s face in the shadow of a great sorrow is the saddest thing on earth) as he chafed her hands and affirmed, half interrogatively, how much warmer they were now than before, and as he looked eagerly to us, every time we entered saying, “Will she live, will she live?” was enough to make one ready to die for that life. We felt that woman must live. And yet—. After a long contest the pulse revived, the extremities grew warm, nearly all untoward symptoms disappeared, we all dared to hope. “She will live now,” joyfully said the child. “Oh, if I could live, it would be good!” said the now conscious mother. But alas! next day the three little ones were motherless and fatherless, and another sad funeral, with one drooping little mourner, joined the awful procession, which nightly filed through the city gates, and covered the surrounding hills with new-made graves. One poor old father watched and tended his boy of fourteen with agonized devotion. The only one left to his old age of what was a few days before a large family. We all worked over the lad with strong hopes, so young, and many of the old had recovered, so much needed, surely he would be spared, but at length the cold young form grew a little colder, the tired little pulse ceased to flutter, and a broken old man followed his last hope to the grave.