Page:Village life in Korea (1911).djvu/273

Rh In Korea one sees many women with their noses cut off, and on inquiry will be told that their noses have been cut off by husbands who were jealous. In former years this was very common, but is not so frequent at the present, though I have seen many such women.

One day a Christian woman came and begged Mrs. Moose for medicine for a woman who was suffering from burned feet. In company with Mrs. J. W. Reed, who is a trained nurse, Mrs. Moose went to see the woman. They found a young woman with both of her feet so badly burned that the bones of the toes were exposed. The feet were dressed and the story of the burning related. The husband had been unkind to the wife, and she had run away and hid herself in a stack of straw for four days; then she went to the house of her husband's grandmother, who received her and gave her food. The husband found his wife, bound her to a ladder, then tied bunches of dry grass to each foot and set them on fire, with the result that her feet were burned till they were in the horrible condition above described. The grandmother's hands were bound with grass and burned in the same way as a punishment for giving aid to the woman. After a few visits and treatments by Mrs. Reed the feet began to improve, at which the husband was angry and forbade Mrs. Reed and Mrs. Moose doing anything more for her, saying that he would kill them if they came again. Once when Mrs. Reed and my daughter went to dress the wounds, the husband sat outside the door whetting a large knife, for the purpose of frightening them so they would not come again. After this the Christian woman who had