IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
1887.] AN AMERICAN MEDICAL MISSION. 63
edifice near Peking. It is about twenty feet high, made of mud, crumbling to pieces, and with large gaps. At intervals of from half a mile to a mile there are mud-built towers."
At Kalgan I found a little missionary colony of Americans, among whom Mr. Sprague was most kind in giving me assistance and trying to obtain information about this route across the desert from Kwei-hwa-cheng which I would have to follow. Besides Mr. Sprague, there was Mr. Williams and two lady doctor missionaries, Miss Diament and Miss Murdock, who seemed to me to do much good. A medical missionary has a great pull. He (in this case she) can show charity and goodwill in a clear, tangible, practical form, which is, generally speaking, much appreciated. These lady doctors appeared to go in specially for opium cures. They, like most of the
missionaries one meets in China, had a great deal to say against
the habit of opium-smoking, and described very vividly its evil
consequences and the difficulty of getting rid of the habit when
once acquired. This, in fact, seems to be one of the greatest
objections to it. A man who has once acquired the habit
cannot getout of it. Miss Murdock described to me how men
affected in this way used to come and implore her to cure
them ; but her only effectual method was to confine them.
She would make them pay for their food, and also produce a surety who would be responsible, if the patient died, for the
removal of the body. In this stern way she had effected many cures, though she was disappointed at times in finding her patient going back to the habit again when temptation was thrown in his way.
M. Ivanoff, a Russian tea-merchant, was another of the Europeans I met at Kalgan. It is always a pleasure to meet a Russian. He is invariably so frank and hearty. No one would ever accuse a Russian of not being warm-hearted, and to a stranger in a strange land this Russian merchant was particularly so. He at once produced maps and books to
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.