Jungle days; being the experiences of an American woman doctor in India

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THE LIBRARY blrtrand smiths book store

140 PACIFIC A VENUE LONG BEACH, CALIF.

in 2010 witii funding from

Dr. Arley Munson

BEING THE EXPERIENCES OF AN AMERICAN WOMAN DOCTOR IN INDIA

BY

ARLEY MUNSON, M.D.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

COPYBIGHT, igi3, BV

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY ,,

Printed in the United States of America

TO MY MOTHER

Foreword

When my friends ask me : "Why did you leave the splendid opportunities of your own country for the discomforts and dangers of a far-off pagan land?" I feel inclined to make the submissive reply heard so frequently from the lips of the meek-voiced women of India: "Kismet! Adrushtam! It was my destiny. How else should I find peace?"

It was during my early childhood that, on turning the leaves of a mission book, I found an illustration representing a Hindu mother throwing her baby into the gaping jaws of a crocodile, as a sacrifice to the gods; and I asked my mother what the dreadful picture meant. When she had explained it to me, I hid my tearful face on her shoulder, and, my heart swelling with sorrow and pity, I resolved to "hurry and grow up" that I might go out to India and "save those poor little babies."

In the years that followed I learned the tragedy of the Indian woman's existence, and the smoldering resolve of my childhood flamed into a mature and steady determination to spend a part of my life practicing medicine and surgery in India, with the hope that by healing the body I might reach the mind and

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FOREWORD

heart and lead them, if ever so short a distance, out of the darkness of ignorance and vice that surrounded them.

My medical college and hospital studies completed, I left New York for India.

On my journey to India and during the five years of my life there I kept a fairly accurate record of my experiences, from which record the present book is largely taken.

The illustrations are from photographs of the actual persons and places mentioned in my story. I avail myself of this opportunity to thank Rev. Charles W. Posnett of Medak, India, for his cordial and generous permission to use the photographs taken in his district.

I have touched but lightly on the evangelical side of mission life. My effort to rid my patients of physical ailments occupied my time so fully that I was obliged to resign their spiritual guidance to my thoroughly able and willing colleagues.

This book, then, apart from rough sketches of scenes as they came before me in my travels from Bombay to Calcutta, from Kashmir to Tuticorin, is simply a glimpse into warmly beating human hearts hidden away in the depths of Indian jungle-villages, where their "Doctor Mem Sahib" found them, loved them, and tried, in her imperfect, human way, to help them.

Though at times the thunders of defeat and tragedy almost deafened me, rang always high above the

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FOREWORD

tumult the clear, sweet note of that happiness promised in Mr. Kipling's vision of the future, when "... no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame, But each for the joy of the working ..."

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