Chapter V
The Christian’s Revenge
Police posts versus dispensaries—The poisoning scare—A native doctor’s influence—Wazir marauders spare the mission hospital—A terrible revenge—The Conolly bed—A political mission—A treacherous King—Imprisonment in Bukhara—The Prayer-Book—Martyrdom—The sequel—Influence of the mission hospital—The medical missionary’s passport.
I was once urging on a certain official the need of a Government dispensary in a certain frontier district. “There is no need there,” he replied; “the people are quiet and law-abiding. Now A—-, that is a disturbed area: there we ought to have medical work”—an unintentional testimony to one result of the doctor’s work, though rather hard on the law-abiding section of the populace that they should have no hope of a hospital unless they can organize a few raids, or get a reputation for truculence.
Which will be better—a punitive police post or a civil dispensary? This seems a not very logical conundrum, yet it is based on sound reasoning, and a well-managed establishment of the latter kind will often remove the necessity of setting up the former. The doctor is a confidant in more matters than one, and the right man will often smooth down little frictions and mollify sorenesses which bid fair to cause widespread conflagrations.
A medical mission is a pacific, as well as an essentially pioneer, agency.
There was a little missionary dispensary on the frontier, in charge of a native doctor, a convert from Muhammadanism, who had gone in and out among the people till he was a household friend all down the country-side.
One day he was sitting in his dispensary seeing out-patients, when he heard the following conversation:
Abdultalib. “The Sarkar has sent out agents to kill the Mussulmans by poisoning their drinking-water.”