She put her hand on his arm.
“It is only the beginning of the things we shall see. It makes you suffer, dear comrade! That is good. You will write such pictures that the world will be moved to tears and charity. They will forgive the sins of Russia because of all this agony. By your words of truth and pity you will help to save those little ones.”
“I’ll try,” said Bertram.
It was a dedication.
In the great hospital of Kazan, once famous in the history of medical science, they plunged deeper into human misery. It was crowded with men and women suffering from every kind of disease, but mostly from typhus and dysentery caused by vermin and hunger and weakness. Whatever their disease, the patients lay huddled together, not on beds, for they had been burnt for fuel, but on the bare boards. They had a few blankets, but not many, which covered four at a time, two lying one way and two the other. There was no heat in the stoves.
Dr. Weekes questioned the chief medical officer, who looked in a dying condition, utterly pallid, and with hardly the strength to walk about his wards.
“Have you any drugs?”
“Very few!”
“Any anæsthetics—chloroform—morphia?”
“None.”