The Dienst der Volksgezondheid — abbreviated D.V.G., the public health service of the Netherlands Indies — appears in Een strijd in Atjeh (1934) as the authority whose wish secured for Dr. J. Tijssen the assistance of the Batak physician Gido Siregar in the Samosir trachoma campaign of 1933.
The reference
Tijssen recorded that on Samosir real medical care had not existed until, a year before his visit, a young Batak physician was posted for the combating of leprosy; and that “de arts, dien ik er vond, zijn naam mag vermeld: Gido Siregar, bleek gaarne bereid gehoor te geven aan den wensch van den D.V.G. om mij bij te staan.” — the physician whom I found there — his name may be mentioned: Gido Siregar — proved gladly willing to comply with the wish of the Public Health Service to assist me.
Context
The service is the institutional background against which Tijssen’s argument for kampong medicine was directed. His contention was not against the state medical apparatus but against its concentration: the equipment of the hospitals was “boven allen lof verheven,” yet there remained millions — “mogelijk veertig millioen menschen” — for whom little or no medical help was available; on Simaloer, with twenty thousand inhabitants, there was no physician at all, only a government doctor coming once a month for a couple of hours. His demand was that a number of young physicians be enabled to work a couple of years in the kampong, at relatively very little cost.
The Dienst der Volksgezondheid in Groot-Atjeh (1937)
Dr. C. E. Gomperts opened his report on the eye survey of 1937 by placing it in the work of the Dienst der Volksgezondheid in Groot-Atjeh. As everywhere else in the Indies, he wrote, the service had for a great number of years been at work combating the prevailing popular diseases in the afdeeling, an activity which in the last five years “door allerlei omstandigheden nog aanzienlijk kon worden uitgebreid.”
From yaws to eye disease
The narrative Gomperts gives is one of a service moving outward from a single successful campaign. “Terwijl de framboesiabestrijding vroeger in het middelpunt van de belangstelling stond, hetgeen een logisch gevolg is van de frappante successen met salvarsan bereikt bij dezen volksgeesel, is in den loop der jaren ook voor andere volksziekten de belangstelling gegroeid en hoe langer hoe meer het vertrouwen van deze bevolkingsgroep in de Westersche geneeswijze gewonnen” — while the combating of framboesia formerly stood at the centre of attention, a logical consequence of the striking successes obtained with salvarsan against this popular scourge, interest had over the years grown for other popular diseases as well, and the confidence of this population group in Western medicine had been won to an ever greater degree.
In the two years before the survey the service went a step further and undertook a more extensive investigation and treatment of the prevailing eye diseases, prompted by the initiative of Dr. J. Tijssen.
The Gouvernements-Indisch arts
Gomperts noted the value of an indigenous physician in the service. “Het feit, dat een Gouvernements-Indisch arts, die geboren en getogen is in Groot-Atjeh en de Atjehsche taal goed spreekt, belast is met den alg. D.V.G.-dienst geeft een waarborg dat patiënten met venerische infecties zich eerder tot hèm zullen wenden dan tot een Europeeschen arts” — since towards a European physician the indigenous population undoubtedly had a great maloegevoel, so that they would not easily decide to consult one for diseases of the genital apparatus. It was on the annual reports of that physician for 1936 and 1937 — eight and nine gonorrhoeal infections in total — that Gomperts based his conclusion that gonorrhoeal infection played only a very small part among the causes of blindness.
Publications
The service’s Mededeelingen van den Dienst der Volksgezondheid in Nederlandsch-Indië, year XXVI (1937) No. 3, stands first in Gomperts’s list of consulted literature, as the source of his figures on population increase.
See Also
- Gido Siregar
- J. Tijssen
- Trachoma campaign on Samosir (1933)
- Kampong medicine in Atjeh
- Simaloer
- Een strijd in Atjeh (1934)
- 1933
- Oriënteerend oogheelkundig onderzoek bij de Atjehsche bevolking van Groot-Atjeh gedurende 1937
- C. E. Gomperts
- Framboesia
- Blindheid in Groot-Atjeh
- Oogheelkundig kampongonderzoek in Groot-Atjeh (Maart-December 1937)
Source
Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad), door Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen, met een voorrede van den heer H. Wanting, redacteur Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg, uitgave van de Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934), pp. 13–14.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad) by Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.
Oriënteerend oogheelkundig onderzoek bij de Atjehsche bevolking van Groot-Atjeh gedurende 1937 (“Orienting Ophthalmological Survey among the Atjehnese Population of Groot-Atjeh during 1937”), by Dr. C. E. Gomperts, offprint from the Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Afl. 19, Deel 80 (1940), pp. 1191-1238 (Batavia-Centrum: G. Kolff & Co.). Received by the editors 25 October 1939. Offprint DLP-157, Bibliotheek KITLV.