Page 33 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf
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arranged, and thousands upon thousands flocked to he treated
by Dr. Paul W. Harrison in 1917 and 1919 and by Dr, Dame in
1921, 1924 and 1933. On one twenty-seven day trip in 1924,
Dr. Dame treated 3,374 patients, performed 36 major operations,
101 minor operations, administered 15 intravenous injections
and treated the King for cellulitis of the face.4^
For the missionaries, this opening of the interior was
a source of great encouragement and excitement, seeming to
justify the Mission’s long years of hard work and to hold out
promise of finally succeeding in their original stated goal,
"the evangelization of Arabia O Q O to occupy the interior of
Arabia from the coast as a base." Several circumstances had
combined to make these trips possible. The fortunes of war,
for one, had played no small part in the Mission’s success,
for the first encounter between Abdul Aziz and the American
missionaries in the Spring of 1914 was primarily occasioned
by a malaria epidemic that had crippled the King’s bedouin
army. Having marched his army to Kuwait for a conference with
the British to discuss the impending Baghdad railway, the
King, who had heard of a skillful Western doctor in Kuwait
from Mubarak, summoned Dr. Mylrea to the Sa’udi encampment
in the desert,48 to see if he could do anything for the
dangerously weakened Sa’udi forces. Peeling that such an
opportunity was too good to miss, Dr, Mylrea, after administer
ing quinine to Ibn Sa’ud's malaria stricken troops, enquired
of the King what would be the possibilities of establishing
a mission hospital In Riyadh. The Sa’udi ruler refused, explain
ing:
