Report says that many flung themselves into it with energy during the
first Balkan War, but that four years of it, ending with typhus, had
dulled their enthusiasm. It is not fair to blame them. To nurse from
morning till night in a putrid Serbian hospital with all windows closed
requires more than devotion and complete indifference to life. Three
Serbian ladies came to sew pillow cases and sheets every afternoon, and
one of them gave up still more time to teach the patients reading and
writing.
But the town was full, in the summer, of smartly dressed women, and the
village priest never once visited our hospitals. Hearing of the English
missions and their work, peasants began to come from the mountains
around, and the out-patient department became, under Dr. Helen Boyle, a
matter for strenuous mornings.
Many of these poor things had never seen a doctor in their lives. Serbia
even in peace-time had not produced many medical men, and those who
existed had no time to attend the poor gratis.
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