The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1898-12-07
THEIR GR|ST IS DEATH R|VER PARK IS ASSURED.
THE MILITARY HOSPITALS AT
MANILA.
Despair Seizes the Unfortunates Who
Become Patients and Many of Them
Seek Relief in Death.

"Scores of the soldier boys are dy-
ing in the hospitals at Manila, just
for want of proper punishment. Ihey
say the government allows sixty cents
a day for each patient L could save
dozens of lives on five cents day.
'Oh, the utter woe of the hospitals;
the helplessness of them. Men as
bright and noble as God ever made,
giving up to death, hoping for it, seek
ing it, taking poison, doing anything
that will end the despair that comes
upon them.
Seeing nothing before them but
days of pain and nights of wretched-
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 moisten parched lips, if by
sheer endurance of nature or obstina-
cy of vitality they do get better, there
is before them nothing but the still
more cheerless period of convalescence
with the probability of relapse, and
the old weariness and despair to be
suffered again. No wonder there are
six or seven funerals day. No won
der the dead house is never empty.
'And outside the hospital and even
in it, such Indifference! Petty con-
sideration of rank and position, squab-
bles about precedence, lack of consid-
Grafton in prescribing and preparing
food, while men are dying, not mere
ly of heart hunger, but for want of
nourishment.
Il 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 sleeves, cried from
the pure agony of their loneliness and
despair made poignant and vivid by
their own telling of it.
II got so | just couldn't go through
the wards. What could | do? | saw
the need of care, of proper nourish-
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"
1t was Miss Schaefer who spoke,
one Of the first Red Cross nurses to go
Manila. She went from here to Ma
Mia on the Arizona, arriving there on
| September Goth. She returned on the
| Scandia, as attending nurse to the
sick among the ninety wrecks of ro-
bust health who are returning as in
valided soldiers. She went strong
woman in good health. She left Mani
la November 18th weighing fifty
| pounds less than when she started
| from San Francisco.
81 do not mean that all in the hos
| pitfalls are careless or Indifferent. Many
are trying to do their best. There
is lots of worthiness and unselfish-
ness among the attendants at the hos
pitfalls. But there is so much inexpe-
rlence, 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, ladling out to
each of the fifty or sixty patients in
discriminately tin cup full of it. In
the whole pailful there was not
enough nourishment for one, even if
1t were made of the best material. But
what it really was made of, shut nv
eyes and refuse to imagine. In a
whole ward there is not more than one
nurse with experience, and for help
ers only one or two awkward bows
who perhaps never saw a sick room be-
fore. DO their best, and what can
they do?
Let no one speak slightingiy of the
women who have lately gone on 10
Manila as army, nurses. ANY woman
who works, as she will have to work
If she goes into the tents at all, will
deserve the tear of the Recording An.
gel, which will blot out all she NAV
nave had of transgression in the past
or all she may be guilty of in the flu.
ture."