Seventeen years after Dr. Elmslie's death Dr. Fanny Butler obtained
another concession for Kashmir, the permission for missionaries to
live within the city of Srinagar. She saw the foundations of a new
hospital for women begun within the city, and fourteen days after
she also laid down what, an hour before her death, she described
as a "good long life," in the service of Kashmiri people. The age
of thirty-nine, she said to the friends who surrounded her, and
who felt that she of all others could not be spared, was "not so
very young to die," and she sent an earnest plea to the Church of
England Zenana Society, the division of the old society to which
she belonged, to send someone quickly to take her place. The new
hospital was the gift of Mrs. Bishop (Miss Isabella Bird) in memory
of her husband. She had seen the dirty crowd of suffering women at
the dispensary door overpower two men, and the earliest arrivals
precipitated head foremost by the rush from behind, whilst numbers
were turned away in misery and disappointment.
Hospitals and dispensaries have rapidly increased since the day
of pioneers. Absolute necessity has forced medical work on many
missionaries in the field. The most elementary knowledge of nursing
and hygiene appears miraculous to women sunk in utter ignorance. A
white woman too modest to give them remedies for every ailment is
usually regarded as unkind. A neglected missionary dispensary is
practically unknown.
[Illustration: (_Photo supplied by the Church of England Zenana
Missionary Society._)
OUTSIDE THE VERANDAH OF THE WOMEN'S HOSPITAL AT TARN TARAN.
(_Showing some of the patients placed out to spend the hot night in
the open._)]
At the time when the Countess Dufferin started her admirable
scheme for providing medical aid for Indian women a well-known
Anglo-Indian surgeon stated publicly that, whatever other
qualification was required in a candidate, two were absolutely
necessary: she must be a lady in the highest sense of the word,
and she must be a Christian, and he proceeded to give good reasons
for what he said. The experience of every woman who has taken up
this work would bear out his sentiments. Without courtesy and
ready intuition of the feelings of others it would be hard to
get an entrance into zenanas, and nothing but love and devotion
to her Master would enable a woman to persevere in spending her
life amongst sick heathen women, in spite of sights, scenes, and
vexations beyond conception in England.
[Illustration: (_From a Photograph._)
THE DUCHESS OF CONNAUGHT'S HOSPITAL, PESHAWUR.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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