The Why and How of Foreign Missions (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908. Excerpt: ... and others far more dreadful, are intensified by ignorance, filth, and superstition. An Oriental tour fills the mind with ghastly memories of sightless eyeballs, scrofulous limbs, and festering ulcers. If our child is ill, a physician's understanding of the case and its remedy, the sympathy of friends, and the sweet comforts of the gospel, make the sick chamber a place of peace and probable recovery. But in most heathen lands, illness is believed to be caused by a demon that has gotten into the body, and the treatment is an effort to expel it. Drums are beaten or horns blown beside the sufferer, in the hope that they will frighten away the demon. Hot fires are built to scorch it out, and of course the fierce heat adds to the distress of the patient. Sometimes even worse methods are employed. "What are those scars which so thickly dot the body?" we asked Dr. Neal, in China, as he examined a wan, pitiful little girl who had been brought in. "Places where hot needles have been thrust in to kill the spirit which is believed to have caused the pain," was the startling reply. "What a horrible foot " we ejaculated, as we looked with Dr. Avison in Korea on a poor fellow who had hobbled into our room. A fall had made a bruise. A native doctor had told him that a demon had taken possession of it and that he should smear it with oil and set it on fire. Dirt and flies had aggravated the resultant sore, till the whole foot was literally rotting away. WonReriief The horrors of superstitious maltreatment of the sick and injured are relieved in many lands only by medical missionaries who walk through those regions of pain in the name and spirit of the Great Physician, cleansing filthy ulcers, straightening defonned limbs, giving light to darkened eyes, healing fevered bo...