JUST MY LUCK!
I really have had rather bad luck. As you know, I was wrecked on my way out from the Old Country. The good ship "Southern Cross" met her fate on a rock in Vigo Bay, and my luggage met its fate at the same time. This was something of a blow, but I expected to be treated a little more kindly by fate when once my destination was reached; I would be a stranger in a new country, and fate is proverbially kind to tyros of every sort.
R.M.S.P. "Danube," which carried the shipwrecked passengers of the "Southern Cross" from Vigo to Buenos Aires, arrived at the Argentine capital towards the end of January. At the conclusion of my journey, one of my fellow-passengers, to whom I was saying good-bye, gave me this sound piece of advice: "Take care of yourself, and the country will take care of you." I don't suppose I can have taken care of myself, for within two months I was down with typhoid fever. This is how fate treats strangers in a new country.
You know that I had the good fortune, shortly after my arrival, to find employment with the Santa Fé Land Company, and immediately on my falling ill, the Manager of the estancia sent me to bed, and reduced me to a milk diet. Two days later he himself took me down to the Buenos Aires British Hospital, and it is to this fact, and to the sensible treatment which I received in camp, that I in great measure owe my quick recovery. The journey to Buenos Aires was made as comfortable as possible. Even so, however, I must have been slightly delirious, for I remember thinking that everybody in the train was wearing a pink shirt without either coat or waistcoat. This must surely have been a delusion.
I reached the hospital on a Sunday morning, and was promptly carried upstairs to a private ward. Though my temperature was now as much as 104 deg., and my faculties were naturally not at their quickest, I could not help noticing the cheery look of the ward. There were flowers on the tables, the patients were obviously well cared for, everything was scrupulously clean, and the British nurses looked both efficient and attractive. The scrupulous cleanliness, together with the latest and most approved methods of treatment, were indeed a feature of the hospital in all its aspects.
It was a short time afterwards that one of the doctors, after carefully diagnosing my case, ordered me to the medical ward, where there would be greater facilities for giving me a course of baths. In the medical ward my treatment was as kind and as careful as formerly, but my new surroundings had for the moment a rather depressing effect. I was just able to realise that the cases around me were more serious than in the private ward, and that both doctors and nurses were more grave and intent on their work. I was soon, however, to become delirious again, and for the next few days was more or less oblivious to my environment. After a short time I became more alive to what was happening around me. We typhoid patients had four cold baths daily, and those patients who in their normal existence were unaccustomed to one warm bath a week were somewhat inclined to rebel. This was amusing. My sense of humour was reviving. The company here was certainly more mixed than in the private ward—consisting as it did of every class and of every nationality, from Montenegrin to Turk, but it was not on that account any the less entertaining. Two or three berths away a brawny Scot of monster dimensions, who was convalescent after an acute attack of rheumatism, would every night before getting into bed say, with a certain naïvete, and without any sense of proportion, that he was going to his "little nest." And yet people accuse Scotsmen of a lack of imagination. On either side of me lay a typhoid patient—each delirious. The one on my right hand imagined he was at home drinking beer in Plymouth, and the one on my left, an Italian workman, would persistently call for his boots. It seemed he wished to return to his work and did not think any other article of dress necessary. The weather at the time was certainly hot, and this may have suggested such a daring flaunting of the conventions. It is curious that among typhoid patients this illusion of doing some action without sufficient clothing is rather prevalent. I myself at one time imagined that I had been discharged from the hospital with only the top of my pyjamas and a travelling rug. As I would carry the travelling rug on my arm, it scarcely compensated for the lack of other apparel. Through all these vagaries on the part of the patients the nurses remained kind and careful as ever. This was especially conspicuous in one case, where a patient insisted that his nurse was a Chinese pirate, and behaved accordingly, but she gave her charge the same excellent attention as before. At this time I began to be troubled with the pangs of a great hunger. After subsisting for five weeks on milk alone, my food diet began with small doses of cornflour and with large doses of castor oil, but at last there came a chicken. I shall never forget that first chicken, nor the nurse who brought it to me. How I tore those bones—of the chicken, not the nurse—apart, and how I attacked them in my fingers so that I should not leave any of the good meat. Eventually my bed in the medical ward was required for a more serious case than myself, and I was sufficiently well to be returned to the private ward for a few days of convalescence. The patients here were certainly more companionable than in the medical ward, and they suffered from less grave complaints. They were for the most part victims of accidents, and were all nearly well enough to leave the hospital. In the evenings we generally had some sort of amusement among ourselves. The pièce de resistance was more often than not a wrestling match between the man with the amputated foot and the man who had undergone an operation for sciatica. As both performers were in ordinary circumstances compelled to use crutches, their efforts were distinctly humorous.
It was after two months of medical treatment that I was able to leave the British Hospital, and it was only when on the point of leaving that I realised what we Britishers owe to this institution.