On an itinerating journey in Korea Dr. and Mrs. Underwood with their little boy stopped at a village called Pak Chun and had a rather disturbing experience.
Just before leaving, I saw a child quite naked, covered with smallpox pustules in full bloom, standing near our door. I asked one of the natives if there was much of that disease in the village at present. “In every house,” was the concise reply. “Why, there is none in the house we are in,” said I with confidence. “Oh, no, they took the child out the day you came in order to give you the room,” was the reassuring answer. We had eaten and slept in that infected little room, our blankets all spread out there, our trunks opened, everything we had exposed. We had even used their cooking utensils and spoons and bowls before our own packs had arrived. For ourselves we had been often exposed, and believed ourselves immune. Mr. Underwood had nursed a case of the most malignant type, and I had been in contact with it among my patients,--but our child! So we sent a swift messenger with a despatch to the nearest telegraph station, twenty-four hours away, to Dr. Wells, in Pyeng Yang. He at once put a tube of virus into the hands of a speedy runner, who arrived with it a week later.
We found the country full of smallpox, measles, and whooping-cough, and added to our smallpox experience an exactly similar one with measles.[12]
The loud death wail goes up from a village home in Persia where a little life has been snatched away by diphtheria. Instantly every mother in the village seizes her baby and the next-to-the-youngest toddles after, and all gather in the family room of the little mud home, where the body lies, and show their sympathy by adding their voices to the general din. Fortunately custom decrees that burial take place as speedily as possible, but the mischief has already been done, and echoes of the death wail are heard from far and near.
Call over the roll of physicians of your own Board. A wonderful report it would be if each could respond and give the number of epidemics through which he or she has worked unflinchingly, bringing hope and comfort and life to hundreds and thousands stricken down not only by the diseases already mentioned but by typhus, cholera, and plague. Call the roll of the countries where no law demands isolation or precautions of any kind, and one after another would respond, if it could, in terms of loving gratitude to missionaries who have introduced or freely used vaccine, anti-toxin, cholera serum, and other products of medical science. Many lands are now awaking to the possibility and desirability of using preventive measures, and vaccination, for instance, is very prevalent in China. It is good to hear Dr. Estella Perkins of China say, after an epidemic of scarlet fever, “I must say, however, that these young mothers have been very obedient to orders. I know by the number of dispensary cases of sequelae in patients I did not treat, that the careful following of directions by the mothers of my children must have saved half of them from bad results of the disease. It is a comfort to be able to do something more than prescribe a little medicine.”