And yet we had great cause for devout thankfulness that so many of our patients were spared. Sixty-five per cent of recoveries is almost unheard of, and yet this was our record at the Shelter.

Under God we ascribed this large percentage of cures, mainly to the three following causes: The use of salol as early and in as large doses as possible. Keeping the patients on the very hot floor till warmth returned and circulation improved. And the conscientious and untiring nursing by the native Christians.

Of course this is not the place, nor have I the time, to go into a minute description of the various remedies and forms of treatment used. We believed we were reaching the case with salol, but various other remedies also were used to control the symptoms. In fact, everything we knew was done, and all must be done quickly or not at all. Many of the cases brought to us were in a state of collapse when they arrived. Often the pulse was not perceptible, and yet repeatedly, where we felt that treatment was hopeless, the hot floor and vigorous chafing, with hypodermic administration of stimulants, brought about sufficient reanimation to make it possible to take the salol, and this seemed to act miraculously. It was in obedience to Dr. Wells’ suggestion that we tried this drug which proved such a blessing. In one case, that of a young man of high rank, his family despaired of his life from the first, and finally went home to prepare his grave clothes, but on returning with them in the morning, found him, to their joy and amazement, quite out of danger. Another striking case was that of an old lady nearly seventy years of age. Her son and daughter, as a last resort, but quite hopelessly, brought her to us. She was far gone, unconscious, and almost pulseless. We rubbed her cold extremities with alcohol, keeping her quite warm on a fine hot floor (she lay practically on a stove all night), and to the astonishment of all, after a few hours, steady improvement began and she was soon restored to her delighted friends.

I insert here our medical record, for the benefit of medical readers, giving all the uninterested the privilege of skipping. We received altogether 173 patients, of whom 61 died; of those received, 18 arrived dying or dead; 95 were taken in rigid, of whom only 42 died; 35 were verging on collapse, of whom 2 died; 4 were in partial collapse, of whom none died; 20 were in the first stage, of whom none died. Of those who died, 25 never reacted, 2 had puerperal complications, 2 were already affected with tuberculosis, 3 developed cerebral meningitis, 1 complication of chronic cystitis, 1 chronic nephritis, and 2 received no salol.

All these recoveries made no little stir in the city, especially as elsewhere nearly two-thirds of those affected died. Proclamations were posted on the walls, telling people there was no need for them to die when they might go to the Christian hospital and live. People who watched missionaries working over the sick night after night said to each other, “How these foreigners love us, would we do as much for one of our own kin as they do for strangers?” Some men who saw Mr. Underwood hurrying along the road in the gray twilight of a summer morning remarked, “There goes the Jesus man, he works all night and all day with the sick without resting.” “Why does he do it?” said another. “Because he loves us,” was the reply. What sweeter reward could be had than that the people should see the Lord in our service. Surely the plague was not all evil when it served to bring the Lord more clearly to the view of the souls he died to save.

A tolerably fair count of the deaths inside the walls each day was possible, since all the dead are carried through two or three gates. The numbers rose gradually to something over three hundred a day and then gradually declined, the plague lasting not quite six weeks. The extra-mural population is probably as large as the intra-mural, including the people within the two miles radius outside the walls. All taken together there are between three and four hundred thousand people.

When the plague was nearly over the following very grateful letter of thanks from the Korean office of Foreign Affairs was sent through the American minister.

The Department of Foreign Affairs.
504th Year, 7th Moon, 3d Day.

August 22d, 1895.

Kim, Minister of Foreign Affairs,
to Mr. Sill, United States Minister.

Sir: I have the honor to say that my government is deeply grateful to ————— and his friends who have spent a great deal of money for medicines and labored in the management of cholera, resulting in the cure of many sick people. I trust your excellency will kindly convey an expression of thanks to them on behalf of my government. I am, etc., etc.

(Signed) Kim Yun Sik.

Gifts were sent to the missionaries, who had assisted at the hospitals, of rolls of silk, fans, little silver inkstands, having the name of the Home Office and the recipient engraved upon them, and most interesting of all, a kind of mosaic mats made of a peculiar sort of reeds grown for the purpose at the island of Kang Wha. These mats have bits of the reeds of different colors skilfully inlaid to form the pattern, and that on those which were given to us was at one end the national emblem, at the other the red cross and the name of the Home Office.

This was of course extremely gratifying. No, more, it was a thing for which to be profoundly grateful that government and people recognized that we, the representatives of our Lord (however inefficient and unworthy), were their friends, and, as far as in us lay, their helpers.