Читать книгу A Half Century Among the Siamese and the Lāo: An Autobiography онлайн

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It was a very auspicious beginning. I knew that neither the Siamese nor the Lāo trusted the Prince very thoroughly; yet every time that I saw him it seemed to me that I might trust him. At any rate, I did not then look forward to the scenes that we were to pass through before three years were gone.

After the first curiosity wore off, many of those who came to our sālā were patients seeking medical treatment. The title “Maw” (doctor) followed me from Bangkok, where all missionaries, I believe, are still so called. This name itself often excited hopes which, of course, were doomed to disappointment. To the ignorant all diseases seem equally curable, if only there be the requisite skill or power. How often during those first five years I regretted that I was not a trained physician and surgeon! My only consolation was that it was not my fault. When my thoughts were first turned towards missions, I consulted the officers of our Board on the wisdom of taking at least a partial course in preparation for my work. But medical missions had not then assumed the importance they since have won. In fact, just then they were at a discount. The Board naturally thought that medical study would be, for me at least, a waste of time, and argued besides that in most mission fields there were English physicians. But it so happened that eleven years of my missionary life have been spent in stations from one hundred to five hundred miles distant from a physician. So, if any physician who reads this narrative is inclined to criticise me as a quack, I beg such to remember that I was driven to it—I had to do whatever I could in the case of illness in my own family; and for pity I could not turn away those who often had nothing but superstitious charms to rely on. It was a comfort, moreover, to know that in spite of inevitable disappointments, our practice of medicine made friends, and possibly enabled us to maintain the field, at a time when simply as Christian teachers we could not have done so. Even Prince Kāwilōrot himself conceded so much when, after forbidding us to remain as missionaries, he said we might, if we wished, remain to treat the sick.