"About My Father's Business": Work Amidst the Sick, the Sad, and the SorrowingArcher, Thomas
Religion
"About My Father's Business": Work Amidst the Sick, the Sad, and the Sorrowing
Archer, Thomas
Pastoral theology
It is difficult at first to understand that the big many-roomed
house just by the spur of the cliff, and peeping
out to see over the shingle ridge, is in any sense a hospital;
but here is a convalescent who will give us a very fair idea
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of the work that is being done; a tall fellow who is but
just recovering from acute rheumatism, and is now able
to go about slowly but with a cheery, hopeful look in his
face. Presently, as one comes near the front door, a lad,
who having come from a hospital where he has been
attended for fractured ancle, has been sent here to recover
strength, is hobbling across a poultry-yard, where
a grand company of black Spanish, Polish, Cochin China,
and other fowls are assembled to be fed, and beneath a
pent-house roof in this same yard, on a bench, which
would be well replaced by a more comfortable garden-seat
if the funds would allow, there is a sheltered and
comfortable corner for the afternoon indulgence of a whiff
of tobacco. Twenty-five men and twenty-four women
are all the inmates, besides attendants, for whom space
can be found; and an inspection of the airy and scrupulously
clean dormitories, or rather bedrooms, on each
side of the building, will show that all the accommodation
has been made available. It must be remembered,
however, that as the period of each inmate's stay is
but a month of twenty-eight days, fresh cases are constantly
admitted during all the summer months; so that
though as late as at the end of March only fourteen men
and six women were distributed in the wards, the average
number admitted during the last official year has been 511
(an increase of twenty-four over the year before), while the
total number of cases received since the opening of the institution
amounts to nearly 5,000.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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