A photograph from ‘Ministers of Mercy’ by James Henry Franklin, 1872.
The book briefs out works of first few medical missionaries working in places as varied as Afghanistan, Arabia, Persia, Japan, Africa, China, India and Kashmir. Here’s an extract dealing with work of Neve brothers operating in Kashmir. The part I found interesting involves Srinagar “The City of the Sun,” being described as “The City of Appalling Odors,”, a city portions of which never received sunlight, and whose canals at times only offered pestilential odors. I found it interesting because I have heard people still describe the city along those lines. And then there is the part about Biscoe boys cheering for Cholera.
The Kashmir Mission had been opened about
1863 by the Rev. Robert Clark. The first attempt
at medical mission work met with great opposition.
The governor and other officials were antagonistic
and apparently permitted, if they did not incite,
mob violence. In 1864 Mr. Clark made the following entry in his diary :” The house was literally besieged with men and
noisy boys. They stood by hundreds on the bridge,
and lined the river on both sides, shouting, and one man striking a gong, to collect the people. Not a
chuprasse, or police officer, or soldier, or official of
any kind appeared. The tumult quickly increased,
and no efforts were made to stop it. The people
began to throw stones and some of them broke
down the wall of the compound and stables. Our
servants became greatly alarmed, for they threatened to burn the house down. The number present
was between one thousand and one thousand five
hundred. When I went to the Wazir to ask for
protection, it was said that he was asleep. He kept
me waiting for two hours and then did not even
give me a chair. He promised to send a guard and
never did so. The police also announced that if
any one rented a house to the missionaries, all the skin would be taken off their backs.”
A few weeks later Mr. Clark wrote in his journal:” Men are again stationed on the bridge, as they
were for weeks together last year, to prevent any
one from coming to us. Our servants cannot buy
the mere necessaries of life, and we have to send
strangers to the other end of the city to purchase
flour.”
[…]
The capital city, Srinagar, is surrounded by
scenes of Alpine beauty. The Kashmir Mission
Hospital, perched on a jutting hillside overlooking
the city, commands also a view of a vale of purple
glens and clear, snow-cold streams. Srinagar has
a population of 126,000 people, living in crowded
houses, and using for their chief and central high-
way the Jhelum River, with intersecting canals thatcould make of Srinagar a second Venice, if people
and architecture only lent themselves appropriately.
While Srinagar has been called “The City of the
Sun,” it has also been suggested that it might be
called “The City of Appalling Odors,” The dense
population is ignorant of sanitation. The drainage
of a city without sewers runs into stagnant canals
in which people bathe and wash their clothes,. and
from which women fill their jars with water for
drinking and cooking. Portions of the crowded
city never receive a direct ray of sunlight, and in
consequence there is a deposit of vile black mud in
winter and nothing less than a riot of pestilential
odors in summer.
In 1886 Dr. Arthur Neve was joined by his brother, Dr. Ernest F. Neve, who had also studied at
the University of Edinburgh, where he established a
record for thorough work in his classes, activity in
religious organizations, and service for the poorer
classes. The younger physician declared that Srin-
agar, from a sanitary standpoint, was like a powder
magazine waiting for a spark.
The spark fell into the magazine a few months
after his arrival, when a case of cholera appeared
in the city, and soon he and his brother and the
Superintendent of the State Hospital were face to
face with a baffling situation. When the outbreak
occurred, the Mission Hospital was crowded with more than a hundred patients, while great numbers
daily thronged the waiting-rooms. On one day
alone the two doctors admitted thirty patients to the
hospital and performed fifty-three operations. Two
of the patients died from cholera, and in a few
hours the hospital was empty. The people were
panic-stricken. In two months, more than ten thousand died in the city. Dr. Ernest Neve, cooperating with the state physician, took charge of a large
section of Srinagar; and Dr. Arthur Neve visited
almost every section of the valley (nearly ninety
miles long) where deaths were reported. Wherever pure water could be secured in good supply, the
people escaped to a great extent. To teach the
populace a few simple principles of safeguarding
their health by suitable food and water was the
privilege of the physicians.
Srinagar suffered again and again from the
scourge of cholera. In reporting an epidemic Dr.
Arthur Neve wrote:“The turbid and lazy stream sweeps against the
prow masses of dirty foam, floating straw, dead
bodies of dogs, and all other garbage of a great
city. How can one admire the great sweep of snow
mountains, the deep azure of the sky, and broad
rippling sheet of cloud and sky-reflecting water,
when every sense is assailed by things that disgust.
Upon one bank stands a neat row of wooden huts. This is a cholera hospital. Upon the other bank
the blue smoke, curling up from a blazing pile, gives
atmosphere and distance to the rugged mountains.
It is a funeral pyre. And as our boat passes into
the city, now and again we meet other boats, each
with its burden of death. All traffic seems to be
suspended. Shops are closed. Now and again,
from some neighboring barge, we hear the wail of
mourners, the shrieks of women as in a torture den,
echoed away among the houses on the bank.”
In 1885 the Kashmir Valley was shaken by a
terrific earthquake. It was most violent near Baramula, where villages were reduced to ruins and
thousands of persons were killed outright In one
hamlet only seven of the forty-seven inhabitants
survived, and four of these seven were severely
injured.
Immediately after the earthquake, Dr. Arthur
Neve hastened to Baramula and opened an emergency hospital. Other missionaries visited the devastated district to collect in boats the wounded who
could be taken to Dr. Neve. In two weeks’ touring,
they visited villages where the roll of the dead included not less than three thousand. Besides the
dead, there were many injured whose cases became
more serious daily, as bones began to knit in unnatural forms, dislocations to stiffen, and wounds
to mortify. Such service as was rendered by the missionaries could not fail to reach the hearts of
the distressed people.
In times of special need, the missionary staff at
Srinagar could always rely on the help of the older
boys in the Mission School which, by 1912, enrolled
about fifteen hundred students of varying ages.
Dr. Elmslie, the first medical missionary in Kashmir, had begun the educational work. Fortunate
the mission whose pioneers are wise enough to
establish good schools and thus prepare the native forces for leadership in Christian movements
in their own lands! The Kashmiri boy was not
an encouraging subject for Christian education, but
Dr. Elmslie and his successors, — such men as the
Rev. C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe and the Rev. F. E.
Lucey — had faith in the power of the gospel, taught
through daily example as well as by precept, to
transform the characters of the unpromising lads
of the Kashmir Valley. “In all things be men,”
was the inspiring motto of the school. A pair of
canoe paddles, crossed, was the crest The paddles
signified hard work, or strength. The paddle
blades, in the shape of a heart, suggested kindness;
for true manhood was described by the teachers as a
combination of strength and kindness. The crossed
paddles suggested the Christian symbol of self-
sacrifice and was intended to remind them from
Whom they should seek inspiration to be true men.
Throughout the city, schoolboys might be seen
wearing this badge, and any one in danger or distress might appeal to them for assistance, since they
had been taught to be ready always to serve those
in special need. Their sports at school were taught
not for their personal pleasure, but to make them
stronger in the service of the weak. One of the
practical results of the aquatic sports was the saving
of eight lives in a single year. If a conflagration
was discovered in the city, the school was quickly
dismissed for the day, while the principal and his
boys hurried to the fire, taking along the fire-engine
from the mission-compound and fighting the flames,
thus saving the lives of women and children.The boys were taught to protect women from insult, to show kindness to invalids and old people, and
to prevent cruelty to animals. One winter a hundred starving donkeys were fed by the boys. Occasionally, a sanitary corps would visit some
especially unwholesome section of the city and, with
pick and shovel, show what was required to prevent
the spread of disease. Convalescents from the hospital were taken out on the lake for an airing. The
boys assisted the police in running down gangs of
men who terrorized women and children, and they
held boat-races on the river when cholera raged, in
order to enliven the people and relieve their mental
tension. Once, when told that the plague offered many opportunities to them to play the man, the
boys actually gave three cheers for the cholera! When floods swept the valley, they rescued families
that were stranded on roofs of houses or on small
spots of dry ground. Native teachers in the school
gave their personal assistance to the medical missionaries in caring for cholera patients. The big
task which Mr. Tyndale-Biscoe undertook was ” to
teach the boys manliness, loyalty, charity, manners,
cleanliness, truth, and Christian doctrine.”
