The Flaming Sword in Serbia and ElsewhereStobart, M. A. (Mabel Annie)
History
The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere
Stobart, M. A. (Mabel Annie)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Roughly speaking, one-half of the peasants who came to be treated for
various diseases, and probably one-half of those who did not come, were
suffering from advanced forms of tuberculosis, the result largely of
neglect during the last few years of warfare.
The small tent soon had to be exchanged for a larger one; this was
curtained into three compartments, one for diagnosis, one with a bed
for more private examination by the doctor, and one for the dispenser
and dresser.
From the first day the dispensary was besieged, especially on
feast-days and fast-days, and most days in Serbia belong to one or
the other category, and then sometimes one hundred and eighty patients
arrived from near and far; they sat on the grass in the shade of some
trees by the roadside, or they stood in a long queue, all waiting their
turn to be seen by the doctor. Some cunning ones arrived in their
ox-wagons during the night, or at dawn, in order to get their names
first on the list. A policeman from the town kept the rota, and saw
that turns were fairly kept.
One of the first arrivals was a girl, who had walked for four hours, to
ask for medicine for her two brothers and for her mother, who were all
ill with typhus. There was no one but herself to tend them, and she had
been obliged to leave them alone during her absence. She would not stay
to rest, but started back on her four hours' return tramp, her face
beaming with happiness as she carried off the precious medicine. Who
would tend her, and the others, if she contracted the disease?
Another day six women arrived in a wagon drawn by two cows, from
a village forty miles distant. They were all seriously ill with
diphtheria, but after the serum injection they climbed back into their
straw lairs for the return journey, as happy as queens.
One man walked sixty miles to come to us, and sixty miles back to his
home, to bring his daughter, who was suffering from swollen glands,
which needed an operation. The girl had no mother, and the father, who
was going to the front in a few days, rejoiced greatly at being able to
leave her in safe hands.
Interesting side-lights were sometimes thrown on the beliefs and
superstitions of the people. A woman came complaining of pains in her
chest. They were not from indigestion, and none of the usual questions
by the interpreter brought any enlightenment. But after much roundabout
talk it was discovered that the woman had lately lost her father and
two brothers, the former from typhus, and the latter at the front. And,
in the customary demonstration of her grief, she had beaten her chest
violently; the force of the triple grief had been too much for the poor
chest, and it felt hurt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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