RED INDIAN NURSING.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12283, 9 July 1914, Page 2

RED INDIAN NURSING.

I am an English nurse work-in"- in America (says a writer in the Nursing Mirror), and while nursing a mental case, for which travel and change of scene had been recommended, we journeyed by steamer from San Francisco up the West Coast of British Columbia to the lukon. When passing Vancouver Island our steamer was delayed at Alert Bay. This is on a small''island about three miles from the mainland, and is mostly an Indian reserve. A<j a great privilege I was taken by the Indian agent into some of the native houses, a privilege last afforded, I wa* told, to the Princess Patricia of Connaught and her party. We went into the most important house, belongTng to the chief of the tribe. It ■consisted of one large, lofty room, and in it were a dozen or more Indians of bdfh sexes sitting on the. mud floor round a. bi<* log fire, the smoke from which escaped*, through a. hole ia the roof. Also thin poles were erected round the fire suspended from which was the dog salmon curing in the smoke to provide food for the winter. In this hoiiso there was a very, sick baby, about six or seven months old. All that had been done for tho poor mite was to tie a brightly-colored handkerchief around his head, and he lav moaning in his mother's lap. One of the men was also, very ill, apparently suffering" from pneumonia. He, too, had been treated by the native medicine man, who had endeavored to expel the devil supposed to bo affecting tho suffering by wild yelling and dancing.- The patient worea gaudy bandage round his nec k though the pain, he said, Was in his side. Poor fellow! there ho "lav on the mud floor in the dark, evil-smellin" room with its smoky tho sole living and sleeping Toom 0 f a dozen o! his relations. We. xiied our best to persuade him to grv to the jittle hospital, but m vain niu ] j was to]fl ;t was extremely cWlioiilt to got these Indians to try nc>%- methods in sickness.