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the next house till we had no fewer than six wards, and some beds in the hall, besides an extra ward for convalescents in the Minister's house.29
Mosquitoes were very troublesome and nets had to be improvised for the patients, while there was a perfect plague of flies. Food, however, was not too scarce, but only dull, since it was difficult to make appetising dishes for patients out of pony meat and rice. But an old Chinese cook, one of the Christian refugees, performed marvels, helped and encouraged by the ladies belonging to the various Missions. "I have seen him run backwards and forwards across the little yard between his kitchen and the hospital with shot and shell flying all round him, and never hesitating an instant." In spite of over-crowding, a dull diet, and a scarcity of drugs, out of about 120 cases admitted to the hospital only fourteen died. One of the reasons for the general good health of those besieged Jessie Ransome attributed to hard manual work and simple food. "Another cause of our good health was the moderate weather which prevailed throughout the siege. There were days when the temperature seemed almost unbearable; but it was nothing to the weeks of suffocating heat which are usual in Peking in June and July; and later, when the rainy season ought to have set in, there was nothing more severe than an occasional stormy day or night."24 In fact all the various accounts of the siege stress the temperate weather. Had there been a typical Peking summer illness must have been far more general. As it was a number of the little children in the Legation died.
By now a volunteer corps of a hundred or more men had been formed, and occupied commanding points on the Legation walls, or went out on sorties from the gates in support of the marines. The fortifications were strengthened by sandbags which the womenfolk made by the thousand, their sewing machines being nearly as useful as the men's rifles. There was much work to be done in digging trenches and constructing barricades, and most of this was superintended with great skill by the missionaries. In fact the 'six fighting parsons', under the leadership of the Rev.
25 Jessie Ransome, Story of the Siege Hospital in Peking, and Diary of Events from May to August, 1900 (London, 1901), 8-9.
24 Ibid., 18-19.
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