Stories from Deli

The care for health in a region like the Delishehe, where thousands of immigrants from Ghina, Java, Borneo, Bawean, British India, etc. arrive annually to work in a climate that is more or less foreign to them, is naturally of the utmost importance. There, where forests are cut down, roads and drainages dug, swamps drained, the tropical sun produces odours that, although the sea or mountain wind quickly sweeps them away, are especially harmful to the new arrival. The work in the fields covered with felled forest and prickly rattan often hurts the feet and legs and causes leg wounds in those whose blood is not very pure, which grow further unless vigorous treatment is stopped. For these sufferers the antiseptic method has become a blessing.

The cholera, which occasionally comes over, mostly from Atjeh; the beri-beri, especially feared on new enterprises, require constant precaution. The abuse of opium destroys the strength of many. The consequences of excesses of all kinds must be healed.

Even at the beginning of the agricultural industry, simple hospitals were therefore set up on the enterprises and placed under the supervision of a hospital assistant or pharmacist hired in the Straits, who had received his training at the Madras College. Usually, however, their taste for cognac made them unfit for their profession, and as culture expanded, the need was felt for a European physician.

In 1871 the first was appointed, and now there is probably no region in the Dutch East Indies, and in many a more civilised country, where medical help is so easily obtained. The number of doctors in the department of Deli, which has an estimated population of 40,000 imported workers and 700 Europeans, is twelve. These are nearly all employed by agricultural enterprises and have, in the hospitals under their management, overseers and pharmacists, among whom are very skilled, at their assistance.

Each physician is appointed to a group of enterprises; the smaller enterprises have combined for this purpose, the larger ones have from one to three or four physicians. Usually each physician has a hospital under him, in which he concentrates his patients. He treats only the milder cases during his weekly visits to the plantations. It goes without saying that the European assistants and administrators also try to provide help from their small stock of the most common medicines, where it is immediately needed.

Every European in the interior is more or less a follower of Aesculaap. Their cures are sometimes miraculous and are probably due to the reassurance of the patient, who has the realization that he has been helped. Where the physician has to fight against beriberi, cholera, dysentery or lingering stomach disease in opium smokers,his task is usually a thankless one.

On the other hand, his field of work is very grateful when he acts as a surgeon; in the Chinese he then finds a far from petty patient; the Klingalese, who is soon moved to tears, is more sensitive. But this work is especially useful when the doctor takes vigorous action for the hygiene on the enterprises and provides the supervisors there with good regulations. He must then devote his attention to the choice of the main establishment, where everyone lives during the fermentation period, to the construction of coolie houses in the fields, to bathing and drinking water wells, to the food in the shops and to that provided in the fermentation shed, to the nursing and working hours of new immigrants and to what not. He then devotes only a part of his time, usually the early morning hours, to the hospital, in which we see him in the above picture busy nursing some Klings, while the sick father devotes his attention to the Chinese, who are seated on the other side; two assistants follow with a washbasin and soap.

This hospital barrack, together with three others, a supervisor’s house and a pharmacy, forms the nursing institution of the Deli Company in Medan, which is depicted on page 261 and serves the closest companies in Deli. The floor is cemented, wooden sleeping tables are loose on it and can easily be removed; the walls are whitewashed wooden partitions, between stone pillars, with latticework above for ventilation; the roof is made of wooden planks (sirappen). Everything can easily be cleaned, disinfected, and if necessary exposed for a while to the unhindered action of sun, weather and wind.

The rest of his time the doctor spends visiting the companies, which he reaches by car or on horseback, where he examines the sick, decides on their sending to the hospital or also discusses new plans with the administrator or assistant or carries out inspections. This care for the health of the worker is prescribed to the employer by his own interests; after all, the workers are almost all immigrants, who are always expensive and often scarce to obtain; and furthermore by the government, which in the ordinance of 13 July 1880, regulating the mutual rights and obligations of both parties, prescribes the obligation of the employer to provide for adequate housing and medical care and treatment of the worker and to ensure good bathing and drinking water.

The adequacy of this treatment has been increasingly strictly monitored and the result of this is that the number of doctors, ahen authorized to perform the medical | practice, and that the hospitals were constantly increasing. The extraordinary prosperity of most enterprises allows the large sums necessary for this to be spent. If the care for the health of the workers is the reason for the generous organization of the medical service in Deli, it also has an important task to fulfill with regard to the European personnel.

For every hundred Chinese workers the entrepreneur can count on needing one European; with 40,000 coolies therefore 400 supervisors. In general, they lead a healthy life; the rosy faces with which many walk around here in the country can testify to this; but when draining swamps, searching for watercourses they come under the influence of malaria. But besides the work, the recreations of a number of lively young people also offer their own peculiar dangers, and so it happens that usually some of them are also under treatment. In somewhat serious or prolonged cases they are usually nursed in the immediate vicinity of the physician; the picture below shows the building for Europeans, belonging to the hospital establishment of the Deli Company in Medan.

When the control of fevers or the recovery of convalescents does not go as desired, the sick person is usually sent to Penang. The railway now brings him easily to Deli’s new port, Belawan, and the steamer carries him from there in 16 to 20 hours over the usually quiet Strait of Malacca to Penang. Arrived there, a carriage takes him in a quarter of an hour to the foot of the hills; and if there is a litter with swift Klingalese bearers or a pony ready, then in one hour he is on one of the tops of the Penang hills, 2100 feet above the sea, called the Wolfscrag. Whoever does not get better there is incorrigible!

Instead of the alluvial soil of Sumatra’s coast, the ground here consists of granite and its erosion. The sanatorium itself is built on one gigantic block, a cliff to which the top owes its name and which in grandeur rivals its Scottish godfather. Here an association of Dutchmen from Penang and Deli bought a bungalow (the British-Indian name for a rural retreat) and founded the Dutch-English sanatorium, in which a fellow countryman and his wife provide the guests with lodgings and hearty food. These live in the old main building or in the later built pavilions, whose names Queen Emma and Qwen Victoria remind one of //home”.

Up here the nights are cool, the morning air is invigorating and invites one to take a walk, either to the nearby bungalows of private individuals, or to those of the government, which, 2600 feet high, is beautifully situated, surrounded by a beautiful garden and where the governor or other dignitaries occasionally stay, while next to it a convalescent building has been built for other officials.

But these trips also extend further, along forest paths to the sources of the river, which forms such a beautiful waterfall below; to the caves, as if built by giant hands; to Western Hill, where the view attracts so many. If there are ladies in the company, then you can you can be sure that baskets will be taken along and that there will be thought not only of viewing and admiring the primeval forests with their giant trees, climbing plants proportionate to them and slender, graceful, bright tree ferns, but that with an expert eye and a skilled hand the forest will also be robbed of a part of its happily inexhaustible wealth of orchids, mosses, ferns, leafy plants of the most bizarre shapes and most beautiful colours. In the plain these will then later be lovingly planted in pots rcared for, have a more or less languishing existence.

Here, however, plant languishes nor man and soon the stomach indicates the time for dinner. Who after dinner, pleasantly tired, sips his coffee or smokes a cigar in the veranda of the hotel or of his cottage, enjoys a view, unobstructed and somewhat beautiful, of which the illustration on page 265 gives a faint idea. Immediately in the foreground is a steep ravine, densely overgrown; to the right are some peaks with bungalows, in one of which a young couple, according to good Penang custom, tastes the luxury of a honeymoon.

If only these cottages could clap! On the other side of the ravine is another extension of the hills, which, lower and steeply descending, does not take away the view of the plain of Penang. There the roads can be seen and here and there a roof peeps out between the trees. At the extreme point of the island lies the town with the old fort; then comes the roadstead with numerous ships; arriving and departing steamers look like crawling toys, but with the telescope they are followed with interest and recognized by the shipping flag.

Breathless on the deck, perhaps a friend is staring longingly at you. Still further, as far as the eye can see left, right and ahead, the Malay peninsula stretches out. Just opposite us lies the part of Province Wellesley that belongs to the Straits Settlements, through which we see the Prye River forging its way in bold curves.

Coconut plantations stretch along the beach, on the right we also see the fields of a sugar company, the canals of which form stripes that seem to be drawn along a ruler. In the background rise the mountains of the Siamese province of Kedah. Here the air forces us to dream. The eyes close halfway. There in the distance is the Eltenberg with its pointed tower point, in front of it stretches the flat Betuwe with its low floodplains; the waters of father Rhine drench these old borders; below along the ravine runs the road to the Doornwerth and we are on the Duno; we have never left the Gelderland avenues; that grand sight before us, it is only the Gelderland landscape enlarged a hundred times by the feverish imagination of the convalescent!

The aforementioned Coolie Ordinance of 1880 also imposes on the employer the duty to send back to their place of origin at the first possible opportunity at his expense workers whose contract is considered to be terminated as a result of properly established permanent unfitness for work. The foreign country, therefore, which has been able to supply able-bodied workers, receives the invalids back in gratitude.

The Straits Colony, where most of the work contracts for Deli are concluded, has declined this honour and punishes with a hundred dollar fine the ship’s master who brings such a return ticket, and so this provision has remained a dead letter. The planters have also immediately realised that by sending the invalids back, for example to China directly, they would make regular immigration impossible for good.

Already in the brochure of the author of this, De toekomst van Dell, published in 1881, the establishment of an asylum for these people was therefore urged, in the spirit of the Pauper hospitals in the Straits or the leprosy hospitals in our colonies. In 1883 the Planters Committee took the initiative for this. The plan was well received and soon interested parties had donated more than ƒ 300,000 in capital for the cause. The Minister of Colonies then included an item in the Indian budget for 1886 for an annual subsidy of ƒ 15,000, which is less than the amount that the Government retained through the registration of labour contracts, which is paid at ƒ 1 per man and causes almost no costs and which was not intended to serve as a means of income.

The Second Chamber, however, found it a pity to let go of that little extra and removed the subsidy item from the budget by amendment. The willingness to sacrifice of the Delians, both Europeans and Chinese, was then put to a severe test, but the desire to achieve something substantial triumphed and soon they had collected 325,000 guilders in capital and 13,000 guilders in fixed annual contributions.

When the financial difficulties had been overcome, the cooperation of the Indian government had to be called upon to draw up regulations for the management of and order in the institution. That was another novelty and a year passed before on 15 March 1887 the association “Immigrant Asylum” was recognized as a legal entity and the “powers” of the resident with regard to the asylum were regulated.

According to these provisions, the asylum aims to care for immigrants who suffer from chronic or incurable illnesses-who are afflicted, who cannot provide for themselves due to physical disabilities, who are insane and who, afflicted with curable diseases, have no means to be cared for. This last category includes the numerous class of immigrants who are not employed by planters, but make their business of trade, sawmilling, fishing, etc., all of whom directly and indirectly bring much benefit to the treasury as long as they are healthy, but, after the aforementioned decision of the Second Chamber, are at the expense of the planters and private individuals in the event of illness or disability.

In May 1888 the institution was completed; the construction costs amounted to approximately ƒ 80,000, so that the interest of almost ƒ 245,000 plus the annual contribution of ƒ 13,000 remain to provide for the care of the 150 persons for whom the asylum was established. It is situated between the main road and the river, on the north side of Medan, just below the hospital of the Deli-company.

The site is 130 meters wide and 140 deep, surrounded by an iron fence, which allows air to enter, but prevents patients from leaving. According to the plan below (p. 266), the administrator’s house is situated at the entrance, the upper floor of which serves as a residence, the lower floor as a pharmacy and warehouse. The three wards, which look mainly like those of the Deli-company, are surrounded by sturdy stone gutters; they are each 47.60 meters long and 8 wide and have cells at the end for patients, who must be kept separately. A covered workshop serves to keep the people busy with plaiting, basket-making or other light work. A house for eight servants and a kitchen with three cooks’ rooms flank the administrator’s house.

The institution has only been in operation for a short time, so that no satisfactory judgment can yet be made about it, but there is no doubt that it will prove to be a blessing for the many unfit people who previously, covered with hideous wounds, along the Lord’s paths called for mercy, or, as vagrants, half out of pity, were admitted to prison and infected it. At the farewell that we, dear readers, call upon Deli for the time being, a last look at the nursing there is perhaps the most suitable to show what a few years of Western civilization can do in an Eastern wilderness.

Eigen haard; geïllustreerd volkstijdschrift, 1889, no. 22, 01-01-1889