“The most revolting spectacles were at the watts where Siamese custom requires the dead to be brought for burning or interment till burning is possible.... I have seen in one of these gehennas hundreds of loathsome corpses in every stage of putrefaction lying around unburied, unburned just where the hirelings that brought them or their friends, too poor to pay the expense of their burning, might throw them down—the hot sun and the rain doing its work awfully.... My own eyes have seen of such human carcasses, sixty thrown together in one huge pile with sufficiency of wood and over thirty in a smaller one near, all roasting, frying and burning to ashes with a thick black smoke going up from the dreadful pyre; with skull bones, legs half consumed, arms stiff in death projecting on this side and that as the pile settled down, till the men in charge with long poles would thrust and twist them back into the blazing heap. All day long, from an area of nearly an acre covered with the ashes of other freshly burned victims of the pestilence, would be continually going up the flames of scores of individual funeral piles; and this not on the grounds of one temple only, but from a dozen here and there about the city. And then when evening came, with the night air would be wafted to us such an unmistakable odor of burning flesh and singeing hair and bones.” In the midst of his heroic labours, Dr. House awoke one morning with what he felt to be the symptoms of the cholera, and for a time he had dire thoughts of a certain and speedy death; but instant resort to his effective prescription and a quiet rest in bed for two days averted the threatened disease. Then he promptly resumed attendance upon patients. When it is considered that his professional services were sought in only a few instances, chiefly among the friends of the mission servants, and that his own aggressive zeal increased the number of patients treated by him, the heroism of his conduct stands out in bold relief. Even though there was no place of refuge for the missionaries, had it been possible for them to flee, yet their greatest security was to remain in such isolation as possible within their premises. But Dr. House’s eagerness to save the lives of men that they might have a further chance to hear the Gospel impelled him to risk his own life to minister to every victim who would receive his services.