Still the condition of girls in Persia is not a happy one, and I think that all of you who have Christian mothers, and know what the love of such a mother can be, will have something to pray about, when you think of mothers and their children in Persia.
Measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, mumps, chickenpox, Persian children have them all. Typhoid fever, diphtheria, rheumatic fever are all common. But almost the commonest illness of all is smallpox.
A woman brought a child into the dispensary waiting-room one day covered with a smallpox rash. The doctor, new to the country, ordered her out, condemning her reckless disregard for infection. “Is there anyone who has not had smallpox?” she asked, looking round at the thirty or forty other people in the room. As she expected, all had had it, and she came in.
It is considered a children’s illness, because people hardly ever grow up without having had it. In fact, their parents take care they shall not, for they are so afraid they will take it badly at an awkward time that they choose a convenient time, and either put the child with a person who has smallpox mildly, or, oftener, inoculate him with it, just as we inoculate our babies with vaccine.
My cook asked me one day, with tears, to go and see his baby; they had given it smallpox to get it over, and it had taken it badly. I am glad to say it recovered. He had not thought it necessary to make any difference in his cooking for us, while he was spending his nights with a baby with smallpox. Another missionary’s cook brought his little boy with smallpox to the kitchen because it was more cheerful for him than being at home; he could lie and watch his father cooking.
So the Persians do not take much trouble to prevent their children from getting ill. How do they care for them when they are ill?
First of all they start doctoring them themselves, except in smallpox, when they say it is dangerous to give any medicine. For other illnesses they give plenty of medicine, not in little teaspoonfuls, but in nice big bowlfuls, and the nastier it is the more good they think it will do. On the whole Persian children are exceedingly good about taking their medicine, but whether they are or not they have to take it. One way of giving it to naughty children is to pour it through their noses from a little tin cup with a long narrow spout.