The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-12-15

Honolulu, Dec. (via San Francisco.
The United States transport Scandia
has arrived from Manila, which place
she left Nov. Is. She brings a number
Of officers, ninety-one discharged and
furloughed men, and two Red Cross
nurses. She brings the largest mail
that ey er left Manila, 213 sacks for San
francisco and one for Honolulu. The
VeSse; Will resume her voyage on or
about the 10th inst
Miss Schaefer, Red Cross nurse
who went from Honolulu to Manila, ar
irving there Sept. 26. returned on the
Scandia. She makes startling charges
as to the way United States soldiers
are taken care of in Manila. Miss
Schaefer made the following statement
for publication:
Scores of the soldier boys are dying
in he hospitals at Manila. lust for
want of proper nOurishment. They say
the government allows so cents a day
for each patient. l could have saved
dozens of lives on 3 cents a day. Oh,
the utter woe of the hospitals, the help
lessness of them. Men as bright and
noble as God ever made, giving up to
death, hoping for it, seeking for it,
taking poison, doing anything that will
relieve the despair that comes upon
them. Seeing nothing before them but
days Of pain and nights of wTetched-
ness, without proper care, without
proper food, alone with no one to give
them sympathy or cheer to write to
friends, to sOOthe aching brOWs or
nOisten parched lips, if by sheer en-
dJlrance of nature or Obstinacy of vi
tality they do get better. there is be-
fore them nothing but the still more
cheerless period of cOnvalescence, with
the probability of relapse, and the old
WEAKNESS of despair to be suffered
again. No wonder there are six or
seven funerals a. day. No wonder the
dead house is never empty.
INDIFFERENCE AND NEGLECT.
And outside the hospital, and even
in it, such Indifference. Petty cOnsid-
Grafton of rank and position, squabbles
about precedence, lack of cOnsidera-
ton in prescribing and preparing food.
while men are dying, not merely Of
heart hunger, but for want of nOurish-
ment. L have gone through the wards
day after day, and as L spoke to this
one and that, and they poured out
their sorrows, men who do not wear
their hearts on their sleeve cried for
the pure agony of their loneliness and
despair, made poignant and vivid by
their own telling of it.
I got so l just could not go through
the wards. What could I do? 1 saw
the need of care. of proper nOurisn-
ment, 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
Il do not mean that all in the hos
pitfalls are careless or Indifferent. Many
are trying to do their best. There is a
lot of wOrthiness and unselfshneS
among the attendants at the hospitals
But there is so much inexperience and
so many clogs to those who would do
much To think of an attendant going
through a ward with a pail of beef
BROTH ladliEg out to the nifty or sixty
patients indiscriminately a lineup full
of it In the whole pailfull there was
not enough nourishment for one, even
if it were made of the best material.
But what it really was made of, shut
my eyes and refuse to imagine. In a
whole ward there is not more than
one nurse with experience, and, for
helpers, only one or two awkward boys,
who, perhaps, never saw sick room
before"