Page:Village life in Korea (1911).djvu/187

Rh straw matting and tied up to a tree or placed on a scaffold out of reach of the dogs and allowed to remain there till such a time as it can be buried without offending the spirit. I went with some friends outside the "dead man's gate," and we counted more than thirty little bodies wrapped in straw and lying on sticks that had been driven into cracks in the city wall. How long they remained there I never knew, but as this was nothing unusual at that season of the year no one took any special notice of it.

When we look at the village doctor and his methods of treating disease and the fearful sanitary conditions under which the people live, it is no wonder that more than half of the children die before reaching maturity.