The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1898-12-15
NURSE 5 TALE Of WOE
According to a Red Cross Per-
son, Patients at Manila
BY POISON HASTEN DEATH
To Flee the Horrors of Hunger
and HomeSickneSs.

Honolulu, Dec. Z, via San Francisco,
Dec. 1.-The United States transport
Scandal has arrived here from Manila,
which place she left November Is She
| brings a number Of officers, 81 discharged
and furloughed men and two Red Cross
| nurses. She brings the largest mail that
ever left Manila, 21S sacks for San Fran
| cisco and one for Honolulu. The yes
sci will resume her voyage on or about the
10Th instant.
Miss Schaefer, Red Cross nurse, who
went from Honolulu TO Manila, arriving
there September Is, returned here. she
makes startling charges as to the way
United States soldiers are taken care OF
in Manila Miss Schaefer made the fol-
lowing statement for publications:
Scores Of the soldier boys are dying
in the hospitals at Manila just for want
of proper nourishment. They say the gov
eminent allows 60 cents a day for each
patient. You can save dozens OF lives
on five cents a day.
"Oh, the utter woe Of the hospitals, the
helplessness OF them. Men as bright and
death. hoping for it, seeking It, taking pol
son. doing anything that will end the de-
spair that comes upon them.
Seeing nothing before them but days
OF pain and nights Of wretchedness. with
out proper food, alone with no one 10
give them sympathy or cheer, to write to
friends. 10 soothe the aching brows or
moisten parched lips, II by sheer endur-
ance of nature of obstinacy of vitality
they do get better, there is before them
nothing but the more cherries period OF
convalescence with tn probability Of re-
lapse, and the old WEAKNESS of despair TO
be suffered again. No wonder there are
six or seven funerals every day. No won
der the dead house is never empty.
"And outside the hospital and even in
it-sucSl Indifference, Petty consideration
Of rank and position, squa bibles about pre-
cedence. lack of consideration in prescrib-
ing and preparing flood, while men are
dying, not merely Of heart hunger, but for
want Of nourishment
81 have gone through the wards day
after day, and as 1 spoke to this one and
that, they poured out their woes, men
who do not wear their hearts IN their
loneliness and despair, made poignant and
vivid by their own telling of it.
~ got so / just could not go through
the wards. What could 1 do? I saw the
need of care, Of proper nourishment of
the most ordinary hospital treatment, and
was utterly helpless TO do anything; just
one cog in the great remorseless grinding
machine, whose material was noble men,
and whose grist was death.
II do not mean that all in the hospitals
are careless or Indifferent. Many are try
ing to do their best. There is a lot of
wortshiness and unselfshness among the
attendants at the hospitals. But there is
so much inexperience, so many clogs TO
those who would do much. To think OF
an attendant going through a ward with
a pail of beef broth, ladling it out 10 the
fifty or sixty. patients indiscriminately
by the cup full. In the whole pail there
was not enough noUuishment for one.
even if it were made of the best ma
terial. But what it really was made of,
1 smut my eyes and refuse to lima CINE
In a whole ward there is not more than
one nurse with experience. and for helpers
only one or two awkward boys, who per-
haps never saw a sick room before"