Medical and Sanitary Report. By E. Winfield Egan, M.D.
The storm had left the sanitary condition of the islands in a very unhealthy state, and it became necessary to establish a medical and surgical department at headquarters.
Dr. Magruder of the United States Marine Hospital Service had done very efficient work in the vicinity of Beaufort, but many of the wells refilled with a brackish red-colored water and there were many cases of illness, two-thirds of which were fever, which, in the healthiest times, exists upon the islands.
It required many emptyings of the wells to get good water and many wells had to be abandoned, as good water could not be brought into them.
A clinic and dispensary was opened from 12 till 2 daily, at headquarters, and patients were required to see a local physician before they applied to the Red Cross, and if they could not get medical aid from any other source they were admitted and treated.
This precaution was taken to protect the local physicians, who were themselves heavy losers by the cyclone and could not afford to do as much as they wished to. There were some noble-hearted men among them who counted no sacrifice too great to relieve their fellow beings.
It is always the policy of the Red Cross to protect the merchants and people who have goods to sell, and giving in the way it does, it not only protects, but improves their business after the first effects of the calamity have passed off—say two or three months (according to the field) and it is conceded at every field where the Red Cross has worked, that it has left the locality more prosperous than even before its calamity.
The average number of patients treated daily between November ninth and April 2d at this clinic was seventy-three. Nights were devoted to seeing those patients who were unable to leave their beds, and this “out-patient” service was only made possible by the tireless, faithful and competent nurses who had volunteered their services to the cause of humanity and had been assigned to the medical department by Miss Barton.
Patients came from all parts of the field, and as there was no hospital, they were placed in families who were on the supply list, and something additional given for the care of the sick.
Sunday was given wholly to surgical cases and the operating room was often opened at daylight and not closed till dark; operations varying from a simple incised wound to a laperotomy were performed and the crude appliances often made the surgeon wish for a moderately well equipped operating room in one of our hospitals.
It would be difficult to write a very clear medical history of the majority of cases from a subjective examination, and I insert one as an example:
“I got a lump in de stomach here, sir” (pointing just above the pubic bone), “and he jump up in de t’roat and den I gits swingness in de head. Dat lump he done gone all over sometime; I fine him here and den he go way down in de leg.”
April 2. A telegram from our president (who was in Washington, D.C.), ordered me to the northern end of the district, with headquarters on James Island, and on April 4 the scarlet banner of humanity waved over a hastily arranged office where for two weeks from forty to fifty patients were seen every day, when it became evident the trouble was in their drinking water. A tour of the island showed wells only twelve inches deep and draining the surface for rods around. These were curbed, cleaned, dug deeper and in many instances filled up and new ones dug. Three barrels were generally sunk for curbing.
This labor was performed without a promise to pay, willingly and well, and it was not long before the daily number of applicants for medical aid on James Island was reduced to ten or twelve.
Medicines and surgical dressings were provided for the work in this district by Mr. E.M. Wister, of Philadelphia, Mr. John Wright, of Greenfield, Mass., and others. These gentlemen not only contributed, but came personally to the field to lend their aid, the former spending a week at a time in the Cumbahee River district, in a small crude boat, among the unhealthiest parts of the islands.
Many rough places were smoothed by Mr. W.G. Hinson, of James Island, who did much to lighten the work of the Red Cross representatives in his locality, and it is always a pleasure to look back upon his efforts to help the people in their affliction.
One of the great evils existing upon the islands is the charlatanism practiced upon the ignorant.
“Traveling doctors,” who never saw a materia medica, infest the country and sell every imaginable cure, as well as cures which are not imaginable.
Removing lizards, toads and various other things from various parts of the body is one form and perhaps the highest type of medical fraud. The “doctor” will declare the patient “conjured,” and at once contract to remove the offending spirit, the usual fee being five dollars; in 90 per cent of such cases, he takes a lien on a cow, horse, or pig, and finally, by foreclosure, gets the animal, for by the present unjust system of trial justices, almost any verdict may be rendered.
I was asked to see a case one evening which was described to be a sore arm. It was four miles distant, but the husband of the patient had driven over for me because “de pain is powerful bad, sir.”
I found the woman sitting in a chair, her right arm resting on a barrel that had been rolled in for the occasion, an immense poultice of bread, meal, feathers and numerous other ingredients wrapped around the arm, the whole weighing about three pounds. As I lifted the cloth I found a mass of the ordinary ground worms dead upon the surface. With a cry of pleasure, the couple said, “Dat ’em! Dat ’em! He tole us dat arm full of worm and sho’ ’nuf he come out.”
Could anything appeal more piteously; could it be more pathetic? Think, at our very doors exists such barbarity, while each year thousands upon thousands of dollars go as many miles to help a people far beyond some of the people of our own country.
I removed the poultice, washed the arm, and found a compound communicated fracture of both bones of the forearm.
Who could stand by such a picture with an unmoved heart or an unmoistened eye! Tell her the error? No; only asked her not to let strangers treat her when she was ill and advised her to go to some doctor she knew in the future.
Dried green peas coated with sugar was one of the staple drugs, and others as useless, but not as harmless.
I found there a grateful people. They would bring eggs, chickens, berries and all kinds of gifts, including money, and when told that the Red Cross never received pay for its work, it was hard for them to understand; but as weeks passed, they learned it and tried to help each other as they had been helped. On the first of June the medical distributing department of the American National Red Cross was closed and all the officers were ordered to headquarters, where the field was closed and the president and staff left for Charleston, to repack and ship to the northern district, June 7, 1894. Then came a few weeks at the Charleston Headquarters. Through the courtesy of Mr. Kaufman, his long warehouse (150 feet by 40 feet) was at the disposal of the Red Cross from the time it received the Charleston Committee to the close of its field, with privilege of occupying it as long as they wished.
Tents were pitched in this room and Miss Barton and her staff lived there until June 30, when the field was officially closed.
Miss Barton and her party went to Washington, leaving Dr. Hubbell, the general field agent and myself.
Crops of vegetables and corn, building and ditching were in progress and instruction was necessary, and this instruction was given as follows:
Each day we would meet from fifty to three or four hundred people and give them a good practical talk, with about these headings for notes:
“Owe no man anything.”
How to keep out of debt.
Don’t sell cotton before it is picked.
Plant more vegetables, and why.
Divide cottages into rooms.
Don’t mortgage, which was a continuation of the instruction given daily from the beginning of the field.
These talks were of much help and the islanders would drive miles to get the advice which they knew was given unselfishly.