Photo from Ralph Salinger’s archive

Santaka.info (Part II) A Continuation, published in issue no. 103

A Frigid Climate and No Hospitals

There were no hospitals in Vilkaviškis, home to about 8,000 people. There were only two doctors and one midwife. Later, when I was a teenager, a dentist stayed in the community for a while. In cases of the unexpected, for example, appendicitis, the deeply afflicted either got better by themselves, or they died, because there were no surgeons. And there wasn’t even talk of health education. In every courtyard people had their own wells for drinking water which often stood… right next to excrement. So it was no surprise typhoid fever was epidemic. The disease took many lives.

Full story with continuation in Lithuanian here.