For those who came from long distances, refreshments were provided, and Miss Anna Beach, one of our orderlies, arranged a stove and tables near the dispensary, and stood all day in the hot sun, or the rain, serving tea, and coffee, and bread, and plum jam—all much appreciated, especially by the children. Mr. Beck distributed refugee garments to those who were in need, and made himself otherwise useful at the dispensary.
The people had a great prejudice against going to hospitals. A man, who brought his twelve-year-old boy, suffering from confluent smallpox, wept bitterly when he was told he must take him to the hospital in the town. On another day, a woman brought her daughter, who was at death's door with diphtheria; and when our doctors said that the girl must stay with us in hospital, as she was too weak to bear the jolting of the wagon on the return journey, the woman replied, astonished, "Hospital! Why, she is much too ill to go to a hospital!" The girl was taken away, and probably died in the cart on the way home.
But the people soon regarded our hospital in a different light, probably because of the tents, and also because the doctors were women, the nurses were devoted, and the atmosphere was homely. Our difficulty soon was, indeed, in preventing them from coming. One woman travelled for twenty-four hours, bringing with her in her ox-wagon four of her children—the eldest eight years old—all ill with malaria; she had confidently expected that they would all be allowed to come into the hospital.
Indeed, it became the fashion for people, even of other classes than the peasants, to come to the dispensary, especially on feast days. Then, after a time, a spirit of emulation seized the patients, and, as the best available means of distinction from other patients, was a surgical operation, they all clamoured for operations, irrespective of requirements. The doctors often gave offence by refusing to concede this much-wanted luxury.
One woman, who had been cured of a dislocated shoulder, still demanded an operation. When she was told that this was not necessary, and that no operation would be performed, she was angry, and retorted, "Very well, I shall cure myself." The doctor asked her how she would do this, and she replied triumphantly, "I shall hold a live frog in my hand as soon as I get home." Another woman, very ill with diphtheria, came to the dispensary buoyed by the hope of tracheotomy. She was delighted when we took her into the hospital and told her that there was a possibility that her wish might be gratified. The only trouble was that she had a tiny baby at home; but she had been brought to us by her old mother, so we sent grannie back for the baby. It was a sickly child, and we took care of it in the baby ward. The mother was disappointed of her tracheotomy, but when she recovered and saw her baby again, her joy and surprise on seeing that it had grown fat and rosy, almost compensated her for her own disappointment.
Children loved being in the hospital, and when they were there, it was difficult to get rid of them, especially when they lived great distances away. Return transport was not easy to arrange, if the parents were not in a hurry to arrange it. "Ah!" said one small girl reproachfully to her mother, who at last came to fetch her, "you never give me sheets like this!"
WITH SOME OF OUR SERBIAN SOLDIERS OF THE FIRST SERBIAN ENGLISH FIELD HOSPITAL
photo by Monsieur Bettich
WITH COL. TERZITCH COMMANDING OUR SCHUMADIA
DIVISION (NOW SERBIAN MINISTER OF WAR)
Superintending the repitching of his tent near Pirot