Re: Sister Rose Gertrude (Amy C. Fowler) To Die For The Lepe
Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2018 8:33 am
Among the Lepers
by a Cincinnati Physician (Dr. Leonard Freeman)
London Tablet
May 6, 1893.
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
Dr. Leonard Freeman, a prominent physician of Cincinnati, says The Catholic Telegraph, of Cincinnati, O., has just returned from a town on the Sandwich Islands, where, after much trouble, he secured the privilege of visiting the celebrated leper colony on the island of Molokai. Of the island he says that it contains about 5,000 acres. It is surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean, and guarded on the fourth by a tremendous precipice, which cuts it off from the rest of the world like a gloomy wall. There are about 1,100 lepers in the colony, and it is true of this spot, if it is of any other, that 'ye who enter here leave hope behind.' Even the ground itself looks as if it had leprosy, with its volcanic debris sticking through the thin soil.
We went at once to the little Methodist church, made of boards and painted white, where the Rev. Mr. Emerson whom I had met on the steamer, was to deliver a sermon. The church was as plain as a church could be, with wooden benches and some pitifully small panes of stained glass inserted above the windows, in order to impart a religious air to at least a portion of the light which entered. Just outside the open door I could see the white surf pounding against the black rocks with a roar that sometimes threatened to drown the voice of the preacher.
This was one of the strangest congregations of the whole world -- some without fingers, some with their stumps of hands and feet done up in rags, some with their faces deformed by dozens of fleshy nodules as large as English walnuts, until they looked like caricatures of humanity, and others with their large and nodular ears hanging down on their shoulders like mutton chops. One man, the native preacher, had a nose like a warty cucumber; another was covered with ulcers. There was not one who did not in some way show the stamp of the loathsome malady.
They were all dark-skinned natives, except one white man, who sat in a front seat, the picture of hopeless dejection. Mr. Emerson spoke earnestly in the Kanaka language, and his audience listened intently. After he had finished he requested me to address the congregation, and I preached my first and perhaps last sermon. One of the lepers, with an obvious paucity of fingers, arose and thanked me. Among other things, he said he hoped I would live long and "never have leprosy," as though leprosy to him involved every evil in the world, and if I escaped it I could not fail to be happy.
After the sermon we got some horses and rode about the settlements. The lepers live in white frame houses about the size of an ordinary room, and divided into several apartments. They do not require much furniture because they prefer squatting on a floor to sitting in a chair. They have horses, cats, dogs, and other domestic animals, and some of them cultivate small gardens. When a Kanaka gets leprosy he regards it as a dispensation of Providence, buries his hopes and ambitions and goes to Molokai to die. To be sure the disease is only feebly contagious, but contagious it is, and the slovenly, unhealthy lives led by man natives are conducive to its spread. Huddled together in small damp huts, existing on insufficient and improper food, eating with their dirty fingers from a single dism, smoking the same pipe, it is no wonder that the Huroniians have been decimated by leprosy and afflicted with other terrible diseases. One may live with lepers for many years, however, without contracting leprosy. It is said that a native woman of Honolulu sent three husbands to Molokai with the disease before she developed it herself. There are several other churches in the colony beside the Methodist, including a Catholic church and a Mormon church; but the Catholics seem to be doing most of the real work -- the others take it out largely in talk. There are nine Sisters of Charity and two Fathers, all from Syracuse, New York. The buildings in which they live are neat and clean and are surrounded by gardens and banana trees. These noble women are sacrificing their lives to a great and loving work under the most discouraging circumstances. How sweet, good and gentle they were to the lepers! Some have been in the colony five or six years without having once left it. But Sisters of Charity are sometimes peculiar, like the rest of us. Sister Rose Gertrude was one of the peculiar kind. It was heralded with a flourish of trumpets that she had decided to consecrate her life to the lepers of Molokai. Donations poured in freely, including considerable money and a piano. When Sister Rose Gertrude reached Honolulu she pocketed the money, sold the piano, married a doctor, and returned to the United States as rapidly as possible without having, it is said, so much as seen a leper. (We will here correct the writer. Miss Amy C. Fowler, who assumed the name of Sister Rose Gertrude, was never either a Sister of Charity or a professed nun of any order.)
I met on the island a gentleman named Dutton, who had been an officer in the United States Army, and lived for a time in Cincinnati. He was formerly wealthy and stood high in the social world. Five or six years ago he was converted to the Catholic Faith, disposed of his fortune, gave up his social position and went to Molokai to devote the remainder of his life to the lepers. I found him a good-looking and extremely intelligent man, about 45 years of age, with black hair and beard and a pleasing address. He lived in a one-storied, three roomed cottage, surrounded by a high stone wall. The little rooms contained many religious emblems, pictures of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and were very neat and clean for a bachelor's apartments. A century plant grew in the yard, emblematical, perhaps, of the slow monotonous life around it.
Every morning this good Samaritan puts on an old blue blouse and a pair of overalls and goes down to what he calls his "workshop," a small frame house with a veranda, around which are arranged a number of benches and some dishpans, filled with warm water. Miserable, decrepit lepers come hobbling in until the benches are filled and standing room is at a premium. Mr. Dutton, with true religious courage and sympathy, bathes the leprotic sores in the pans of water, and applies fresh salve and bandages. A Cincinnati lady has presented him with a large music box, and while he is attending to these poor people with great ulcers on the soles of their feet, and without toes, or even without much of any feet at all, this music box plays waltzes by strains -- a genuine piece of sarcasm. Mr. Dutton is nobly carrying out the work inaugurated by Father Damien, who lived some 16 years among the lepers, and finally died a martyr to the disease the horror of which he had endeavoured so long to mitigate.
I remained in the leper colony two nights and nearly two days, and was just as glad to get away from the place as I was to get into it. I never before realized how dreary a landscape could be in spite of beautiful scenery and perfect climate if suffering humanity formed the background. Although, strictly speaking, the people do not suffer much, a characteristic of the disease is the early destruction of sensation, so that a finger, or even a leg, might be hacked off without much discomfort. They never commit suicide. It would be easy to climb the precipice that guards their prison and jump off, but they do not do it. The truth is, they seem comparatively resigned and happy. There are so many of them that they do not lack society, and the worst cases appear to mingle freely with those in the earlier stages. They have meat, bread, pie, plenty of clothes and bedding, churches, a reading room, and good enough homes. They have organized a band of musicians among them, and some are quite good performers. The Catholics have erected several plain pavilions, like hospital wards, with kitchen and diningroom attached. The Sisters try to induce the leper girls to occupy these quarters, designed for their comfort, and they are comfortable. But as a usual thing, the girls would rather enjoy the perfect freedom of the separate private cottages than to be under the rules and restriction of the Church. The Sisters were just opening some Christmas boxes, filled with large coloured rubber balls, dolls, and presents of various kinds; and I thought to myself, if the people in the great outside world knew how much things were needed in cheerless Molokai, there would be not only a few pitiful little boxes to open, but whole steamer loads of them.
It was with a feeling of relief that I took my mackintosh under my arm, bade farewell to the kind-hearted doctor and climbed the winding trail up the hill. I stood on the top and took a last view of the leper colony. There was the same little tongue of land far below, green with moist grass, and fringed with lines of snowy breakers, rolling against black, volcanic rocks. There was the same multitude of cottages, shining while in the sunlight; the same blue sky and fleecy clouds. But the beauty of the spot, its watering place appearance was gone. I knew what a dreary, festering ulcer of a hole it really was; and I felt a deep love and sympathy for the Sisters of Charity and the Fathers, and for Mr. Dutton and the good doctor, who were devoting their lives and energies to the lepers, in order that their living deaths might be a little less hard to bear.
Considering the difficulties of the question, the prejudices of the nations, and the vacillatory character of the Government, one must admit that Hawaii has done well by her lepers, and we must give her credit for thoughtfulness and humanity.
by a Cincinnati Physician (Dr. Leonard Freeman)
London Tablet
May 6, 1893.
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
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Dr. Leonard Freeman, a prominent physician of Cincinnati, says The Catholic Telegraph, of Cincinnati, O., has just returned from a town on the Sandwich Islands, where, after much trouble, he secured the privilege of visiting the celebrated leper colony on the island of Molokai. Of the island he says that it contains about 5,000 acres. It is surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean, and guarded on the fourth by a tremendous precipice, which cuts it off from the rest of the world like a gloomy wall. There are about 1,100 lepers in the colony, and it is true of this spot, if it is of any other, that 'ye who enter here leave hope behind.' Even the ground itself looks as if it had leprosy, with its volcanic debris sticking through the thin soil.
We went at once to the little Methodist church, made of boards and painted white, where the Rev. Mr. Emerson whom I had met on the steamer, was to deliver a sermon. The church was as plain as a church could be, with wooden benches and some pitifully small panes of stained glass inserted above the windows, in order to impart a religious air to at least a portion of the light which entered. Just outside the open door I could see the white surf pounding against the black rocks with a roar that sometimes threatened to drown the voice of the preacher.
This was one of the strangest congregations of the whole world -- some without fingers, some with their stumps of hands and feet done up in rags, some with their faces deformed by dozens of fleshy nodules as large as English walnuts, until they looked like caricatures of humanity, and others with their large and nodular ears hanging down on their shoulders like mutton chops. One man, the native preacher, had a nose like a warty cucumber; another was covered with ulcers. There was not one who did not in some way show the stamp of the loathsome malady.
They were all dark-skinned natives, except one white man, who sat in a front seat, the picture of hopeless dejection. Mr. Emerson spoke earnestly in the Kanaka language, and his audience listened intently. After he had finished he requested me to address the congregation, and I preached my first and perhaps last sermon. One of the lepers, with an obvious paucity of fingers, arose and thanked me. Among other things, he said he hoped I would live long and "never have leprosy," as though leprosy to him involved every evil in the world, and if I escaped it I could not fail to be happy.
After the sermon we got some horses and rode about the settlements. The lepers live in white frame houses about the size of an ordinary room, and divided into several apartments. They do not require much furniture because they prefer squatting on a floor to sitting in a chair. They have horses, cats, dogs, and other domestic animals, and some of them cultivate small gardens. When a Kanaka gets leprosy he regards it as a dispensation of Providence, buries his hopes and ambitions and goes to Molokai to die. To be sure the disease is only feebly contagious, but contagious it is, and the slovenly, unhealthy lives led by man natives are conducive to its spread. Huddled together in small damp huts, existing on insufficient and improper food, eating with their dirty fingers from a single dism, smoking the same pipe, it is no wonder that the Huroniians have been decimated by leprosy and afflicted with other terrible diseases. One may live with lepers for many years, however, without contracting leprosy. It is said that a native woman of Honolulu sent three husbands to Molokai with the disease before she developed it herself. There are several other churches in the colony beside the Methodist, including a Catholic church and a Mormon church; but the Catholics seem to be doing most of the real work -- the others take it out largely in talk. There are nine Sisters of Charity and two Fathers, all from Syracuse, New York. The buildings in which they live are neat and clean and are surrounded by gardens and banana trees. These noble women are sacrificing their lives to a great and loving work under the most discouraging circumstances. How sweet, good and gentle they were to the lepers! Some have been in the colony five or six years without having once left it. But Sisters of Charity are sometimes peculiar, like the rest of us. Sister Rose Gertrude was one of the peculiar kind. It was heralded with a flourish of trumpets that she had decided to consecrate her life to the lepers of Molokai. Donations poured in freely, including considerable money and a piano. When Sister Rose Gertrude reached Honolulu she pocketed the money, sold the piano, married a doctor, and returned to the United States as rapidly as possible without having, it is said, so much as seen a leper. (We will here correct the writer. Miss Amy C. Fowler, who assumed the name of Sister Rose Gertrude, was never either a Sister of Charity or a professed nun of any order.)
I met on the island a gentleman named Dutton, who had been an officer in the United States Army, and lived for a time in Cincinnati. He was formerly wealthy and stood high in the social world. Five or six years ago he was converted to the Catholic Faith, disposed of his fortune, gave up his social position and went to Molokai to devote the remainder of his life to the lepers. I found him a good-looking and extremely intelligent man, about 45 years of age, with black hair and beard and a pleasing address. He lived in a one-storied, three roomed cottage, surrounded by a high stone wall. The little rooms contained many religious emblems, pictures of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and were very neat and clean for a bachelor's apartments. A century plant grew in the yard, emblematical, perhaps, of the slow monotonous life around it.
Every morning this good Samaritan puts on an old blue blouse and a pair of overalls and goes down to what he calls his "workshop," a small frame house with a veranda, around which are arranged a number of benches and some dishpans, filled with warm water. Miserable, decrepit lepers come hobbling in until the benches are filled and standing room is at a premium. Mr. Dutton, with true religious courage and sympathy, bathes the leprotic sores in the pans of water, and applies fresh salve and bandages. A Cincinnati lady has presented him with a large music box, and while he is attending to these poor people with great ulcers on the soles of their feet, and without toes, or even without much of any feet at all, this music box plays waltzes by strains -- a genuine piece of sarcasm. Mr. Dutton is nobly carrying out the work inaugurated by Father Damien, who lived some 16 years among the lepers, and finally died a martyr to the disease the horror of which he had endeavoured so long to mitigate.
I remained in the leper colony two nights and nearly two days, and was just as glad to get away from the place as I was to get into it. I never before realized how dreary a landscape could be in spite of beautiful scenery and perfect climate if suffering humanity formed the background. Although, strictly speaking, the people do not suffer much, a characteristic of the disease is the early destruction of sensation, so that a finger, or even a leg, might be hacked off without much discomfort. They never commit suicide. It would be easy to climb the precipice that guards their prison and jump off, but they do not do it. The truth is, they seem comparatively resigned and happy. There are so many of them that they do not lack society, and the worst cases appear to mingle freely with those in the earlier stages. They have meat, bread, pie, plenty of clothes and bedding, churches, a reading room, and good enough homes. They have organized a band of musicians among them, and some are quite good performers. The Catholics have erected several plain pavilions, like hospital wards, with kitchen and diningroom attached. The Sisters try to induce the leper girls to occupy these quarters, designed for their comfort, and they are comfortable. But as a usual thing, the girls would rather enjoy the perfect freedom of the separate private cottages than to be under the rules and restriction of the Church. The Sisters were just opening some Christmas boxes, filled with large coloured rubber balls, dolls, and presents of various kinds; and I thought to myself, if the people in the great outside world knew how much things were needed in cheerless Molokai, there would be not only a few pitiful little boxes to open, but whole steamer loads of them.
It was with a feeling of relief that I took my mackintosh under my arm, bade farewell to the kind-hearted doctor and climbed the winding trail up the hill. I stood on the top and took a last view of the leper colony. There was the same little tongue of land far below, green with moist grass, and fringed with lines of snowy breakers, rolling against black, volcanic rocks. There was the same multitude of cottages, shining while in the sunlight; the same blue sky and fleecy clouds. But the beauty of the spot, its watering place appearance was gone. I knew what a dreary, festering ulcer of a hole it really was; and I felt a deep love and sympathy for the Sisters of Charity and the Fathers, and for Mr. Dutton and the good doctor, who were devoting their lives and energies to the lepers, in order that their living deaths might be a little less hard to bear.
Considering the difficulties of the question, the prejudices of the nations, and the vacillatory character of the Government, one must admit that Hawaii has done well by her lepers, and we must give her credit for thoughtfulness and humanity.