Buitenzorg

“ Bogor, the native name of the place called Buitenzorg by the Dutch. Intelligent natives can give no interpretation to the meaning of the word. Mogor is to run about after a women, and in a substantive form would become Bogor, but the natives do not appear to attach this meaning to it. ”

“ So much that is misleading has been written about Buitenzorg—the Washington of Java, that X. was woefully deceived. It certainly is a beautiful place—indeed exquisitely so, but a [50] traveller is scarcely satisfied with the beauties of nature when he pays to mankind for creature comforts which he fails to obtain. The most agreeable feature of the journey to a stranger who has, as it were, been long hemmed in by dense jungles in the Peninsula, was certainly the long stretches of open country reminding him of the pasture lands and fields which fly past the train at home. ”

“ There are avenues of stately palms, and clumps of bamboos of perhaps fifty different kinds; and an endless variety of tropical shrubs and trees with strange and beautiful foliage. As a change from the excessive heat of Batavia, Buitenzorg is a delightful abode. It is just elevated enough to have deliciously cool evenings and nights, but not so much as to require any change of clothing; and to a person long resident in the hotter climate of the plains, the air is always fresh and pleasant, and admits of walking at almost any hour of the day. ”

“ Adeline was a dear little woman, a fair-haired, little doll-mother, with her seven children, like a family of flaxen-haired dolls: the oldest a girl turned eight, the youngest a baby of a year or so; and Gerrit was always making jokes about not leaving off yet; and indeed Adeline was expecting another in the autumn. So Constance got on well with Gerrit and Adeline, but still she felt out of touch with this brother too, even though Gerrit had such a charming way of bringing back the memory of their early days, when they used to play in the river at Buitenzorg. ”

“ X. was informed that the proper journey from Buitenzorg was by carriage via Poentjuk to Sindanglaya, where a stay should be made at Gezondleid's establishment after securing an upstairs room. The next stage in the traveller's journey is to Tjandjoer and thence to Garvet. And after a week at Garvet on again to Djoedja, Solo, Semarang, etc., but the traveller had already had sufficient of hotel life in Java, and so determined to at once avail himself of a kind invitation he had received to stay on an estate, not many miles from Soekaboemi. ”

“ Government schools for the European education of Chinese children are established in the principal towns. Private mechanical and crafts schools are established at Jokjakarta, Surabaya and Semarang, and there is an agricultural school at Buitenzorg. ”

“ And any man, woman or child who comes to be hungry and weary and with neither home nor friend nor resort, must go to the Department in the end—or seek some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means—for the poor there is no easy death. And at any hour in the day or night there is food, shelter and a blue uniform for all comers—that is the first condition of the Department's incorporation—and in return for a day's shelter the Department extracts a day's work, and then returns the visitor's proper clothing and sends him or her out again. ”

“ They fill our gaols, our hospitals, and our asylums, and, like a swarm of low parasitical organisms, they have, to an extent that is almost incredible, absorbed the outdoor relief that was meant for the self-supporting and struggling poor. ”

“ It is for this reason that the advance of rural social work will depend upon arousing an active interest in the welfare of the community's "disadvantaged" through discussion by such organizations as the church, the grange, the farm and home bureau, lodges, women's clubs, instruction in high schools, etc. The work of the public health nurse will reveal many family problems with which she is unable to deal and which demand the help of one experienced in social work, and the nurse will be of service in educating the community to the need of such work. ”

“ What is the Existing Machinery of Public Health in what are called—with a grim sarcasm—our Rural Sanitary Districts? Is health or sickness, life or death, the greatest miracle in the present condition of things? To some of us the greatest miracle, repeated every day, is that we can live at all in the surroundings which our ignorance and neglect create. ”

“ The farmer loses vitality through long hours of labor, and is susceptible to disease scarcely less than is the working man in town. And he is more at fault if he suffers, for there is room to build the home in a healthful location, where drainage is easy and pure air and sunshine are abundant; there is water without price for cleansing purposes, and sanitation is possible without excessive cost. In most cases it is lack of information that prevents a realization of perils that lurk, and every rural community should have instruction in hygiene from school-teacher, physician, or resident nurse. ”

“ To the aged, curative treatment is, indeed, scarcely applicable, but it is interesting to trace, in the policy of expressly directing the grant of adequate outdoor relief to the deserving aged, combined with the statutory requirement that a friendly society allowance is not to be taken into account in such grant, a sort of Principle of Greater Eligibility. With regard to the able-bodied, there is a certain premonition of the Principle of Curative Treatment in the farm colony as well as in the "mental instructor" sanctioned for the able-bodied ward of the workhouse. ”

“ Since, then, it is chiefly the soil, the vital condition of our tissues, which resists disease, we must do our part in making that soil good or bad for disease. That is why our hygiene, our obedience to the individual laws of our own experience, which show us [Pg 133] how we can keep well and how we get sick, must be learned and taught by every one of us so far as we can in such a place as a dispensary or a patient's home. ”

“ By outdoor relief we mean relief given to the poor outside of an institution. Usually, outdoor relief refers simply to the public relief of dependents outside of institutions, but we shall use the phrase to cover both public and private relief. It is evident from what has already been said that the class of persons to whom this form of relief is appropriate are those in temporary distress, whose condition of dependence is not a permanent one and, therefore, usually those whose condition is due either to defective personal character or to faulty social organization. ”

“ The Board consider that aged deserving persons should not be urged to enter the workhouse at all unless there is some cause which renders such a course necessary, such as infirmity of mind or body, the absence of house accommodation, or of a suitable person to care for them, or some similar cause, but that they should be relieved by having adequate outdoor relief granted to them. The Board are happy to think that it is commonly the practice of boards of guardians to grant outdoor relief in such cases, but they are afraid that too frequently such relief is not adequate in amount. ”

“ We suggest that each member of even such a family requires, for restoration, specialised treatment according to his or her need. The infant, the child of school age, the mentally defective, the sick, the infirm or incapacitated, the boy or girl above school age and finally the able-bodied and able-minded adult, each requires that something different should be done for him or her, if that individual is to be properly dealt with. The alternative, namely, to treat the family as a whole, means to place it in the General Mixed Workhouse, or merely to give it a dole of Outdoor Relief. ”

“ Having briefly sketched the general duties of an attendant, it seems best to again remind them, that an asylum is built and maintained for no other purpose than for caring for the insane; that each patient is entitled to the best our means can afford; that while the attendants are not responsible for the medical treatment, they are for that kind and intelligent care it is within their province to give; and they are also reminded that, so far as it can be done, such personal attention is to be given to each patient as will assist in recovery or improvement, or promote his well-being. ”

“ In lumber sections, in mining camps, on Alaskan river boats, in far back mountain settlements, in the patios of Porto Rico and our island possessions, with the Negroes of the South, the Orientals of the Pacific coast, the backward peoples, the Mexicans and Indians, the depressed of our great cities, at the gates of the nation—wherever the cry of human need in our land has been met by Home Missions, there these ministers of healing have carried their blessed service.
If the nurse, or deaconess, is to fulfill her mission to the sick, she must have training. ”

“ The instructions of the doctor at the dispensary can accomplish but little in this field when compared with the detailed teaching of the social worker in the patient's house, in his workshop, in the schools and factories where disease is spread so much more frequently than in the dispensaries. If we hope to show people how they can avoid the disasters of illness, our teaching should be given in the very place where these disasters most often occur. ”

“ As I have already indicated, at the commencement of the war we knew little or nothing about what was necessary to keep men in military service well,—what food, what clothing, what tents, what camps, what recreations, what everything, I may say. Now the Sanitary Commission has made searching inquiries touching every point of camp and soldier life,—gathering in facts from all quarters, and seeking to attain to some fixed sanitary principles. ”

“ From the centre of this lawn a high flagstaff rises. In the general work of the institution and in the clearing and cultivation of the land, a large number of the patients are daily employed, not by compulsion, but by kindly inducement. Apart from the parties of males engaged in the fields, and the women serving in the laundry, kitchen, &c., all directly under the eye of male and female officers respectively, there are men who, in various kinds of asylum labour, and without any surveillance beyond that of the general superintendency, work to good purpose. ”

“ On our Scheme we have shown how each one would be appointed to that kind of work for which his previous knowledge and experience and strength best adapted him. Moreover, there can be no possible comparison between the conditions of health enjoyed by men and women wandering about homeless, sleeping in the streets or in the fever-haunted lodging-houses, or living huddled up in a single room, and toiling twelve and fourteen hours in a sweater's den, and living in comparative comfort in well-warmed and ventilated houses, situated in the open country, with abundance of good, healthy food. ”

“ I have known repeated instances of young men, brought up delicately in the eastern cities, accustomed, as clerks, to a sedentary life, with feeble constitutions,—I have known such repeatedly to enter upon the business of surveying the public lands, or in the hunting and trapping business, be absent for months, and return with robust health. It is a common thing for a frontier man, whose health is on the decline, and especially when indications of pulmonary affection appear, to engage in a hunting expedition to renovate his health. ”

“ We must appreciate the very valuable efforts that are already being put forth to make the rural homes more efficient with reference to sanitation, hygiene, and proper food. This instruction promises to [Pg 35] decrease much human suffering, discontent, and poverty. In some respects such constructive service is more needed in the country than in the city. Certainly, good results are already appearing as a result of the efforts that institutions and people interested in the country have put forth. ”

“ The inhabitants of the smaller towns left their houses, pitched tents in the fields, wandering separate from each other careless of hunger or the sky's inclemency, while they imagined that they avoided the death-dealing disease. The farmers and cottagers, on the contrary, struck with the fear of solitude, and madly desirous of medical assistance, flocked into the towns. ”

“ The chief reason, however, for mental hygiene propaganda in the country is the influence it will have in preventing human suffering. The problem of mind health is a humane one and this fact removes the distinction between rural and urban need. Urban fields offer more inducements at present for the worker, but the [Pg 88] rural need is also great. The rural districts are less conscious of their distress and perhaps respond less readily to whatever instruction is given them, but they certainly must be given the benefits of the mental hygiene movement by a patient and persistent propaganda. ”

“ Rural Health Preservers.—Three health preservers are needed in every rural community. These are the health official, the physician, and the nurse. There is need first of one whose business it shall be to inspect the sanitary conditions of public and private buildings, and to watch the health of the people, old and young. It matters little whether the official is under State or local authority, if he efficiently and fearlessly performs his duty. ”

“ The Sanitary distributes the supplies sent, embraces Sanitary Inspection by medical men of general hospitals, Sanitary Inspection by medical men of camps and field hospitals, Special Relief with all its agencies and in all its various departments, and the Hospital Directory with its register and its 500,000 names. Every dollar expended meets some real want, or helps to save a life. Do the people wish this agency in behalf of the soldiers in tent, hospital, and on the battle field—at the East—West—South, to cease? ”