The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere

by M. A. Stobart

The after-effects of neglected typhus are often worse than the original disease; and amongst ignorant peasants, without doctors, every case of typhus is a neglected case. One day a man brought his little girl (Rositza by name) in an ox-wagon from a distance of thirty miles. The child was suffering from a loathsome-looking leg, the result of neglect after typhus. The two bones of the leg were as bare of flesh as though a dog had gnawed them clean; and the foot was a gangrenous mass of black pulp. Above the knee were huge holes and horrible sores. The child's mother was dead; the father was going to the front next day, and he begged us to take Rositza into our hospital that he might go with a less heavy heart. He quite understood, when he was told, that the only hope for the child's life was amputation of the leg, and his eyes filled with tears of gratitude when we told him that there was no reason why, under our care, her life should not be spared. The leg, half way up to the thigh, was amputated; Rositza, an intelligent and charming child of about twelve years of age, recovered rapidly, and was soon, on crutches, hopping around, mothering other children who occupied our children's ward tents.

For though we were primarily a military hospital, the military authorities waived the usual rule as to the exclusion of civilian patients, and we put up tents respectively for civilian men, for women, and for children, in order to deal with cases which could not be peremptorily treated at the dispensary. Our doctors entered whole-heartedly into the scheme and took it in turns to be on duty by the roadside.

This dispensary work brought clearly to light the fact that war is responsible for maiming and killing not only the fighting portion of the population; it also maims and kills, by slow torture, the women and children who are responsible for the life, health, and vigour of future generations.

Roughly speaking, one-half of the peasants who came to be treated for various diseases, and probably one-half of those who did not come, were suffering from advanced forms of tuberculosis, the result largely of neglect during the last few years of warfare.

The small tent soon had to be exchanged for a larger one; this was curtained into three compartments, one for diagnosis, one with a bed for more private examination by the doctor, and one for the dispenser and dresser.

From the first day the dispensary was besieged, especially on feast-days and fast-days, and most days in Serbia belong to one or the other category, and then sometimes one hundred and eighty patients arrived from near and far; they sat on the grass in the shade of some trees by the roadside, or they stood in a long queue, all waiting their turn to be seen by the doctor. Some cunning ones arrived in their ox-wagons during the night, or at dawn, in order to get their names first on the list. A policeman from the town kept the rota, and saw that turns were fairly kept.

One of the first arrivals was a girl, who had walked for four hours, to ask for medicine for her two brothers and for her mother, who were all ill with typhus. There was no one but herself to tend them, and she had been obliged to leave them alone during her absence. She would not stay to rest, but started back on her four hours' return tramp, her face beaming with happiness as she carried off the precious medicine. Who would tend her, and the others, if she contracted the disease?

Another day six women arrived in a wagon drawn by two cows, from a village forty miles distant. They were all seriously ill with diphtheria, but after the serum injection they climbed back into their straw lairs for the return journey, as happy as queens.

One man walked sixty miles to come to us, and sixty miles back to his home, to bring his daughter, who was suffering from swollen glands, which needed an operation. The girl had no mother, and the father, who was going to the front in a few days, rejoiced greatly at being able to leave her in safe hands.

Interesting side-lights were sometimes thrown on the beliefs and superstitions of the people. A woman came complaining of pains in her chest. They were not from indigestion, and none of the usual questions by the interpreter brought any enlightenment. But after much roundabout talk it was discovered that the woman had lately lost her father and two brothers, the former from typhus, and the latter at the front. And, in the customary demonstration of her grief, she had beaten her chest violently; the force of the triple grief had been too much for the poor chest, and it felt hurt.