Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• Timeline of Events
• 1. Early Life
  • Earliest Memories
  • Milwaukee Childhood
  • Pella, Iowa, and Adolescence
  • Central College
  • Graduation and My First Job
• 2. Medical Training
  • The Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania
  • Internships
• 3. Early Years in Kuwait
  • Getting There
  • A New Life
  • Coming Out in Kuwaiti Society
  • Kuwait City
  • Mission History
  • Dr. Mylrea
  • Living with Mary Van Pelt
  • Weddings
  • My First Case
  • Under the Knife
  • Home
  • Mistake
• 4. A Real Doctor
  • Practicing Medicine in Kuwait, 1936
  • Cases in the Early Years
  • Trachoma
  • The Summer’s Heat
  • Expectations and Disappointments
• 5. Medicine and Marriage
  • The Way of a Man with a Maid
  • Scotland to Kuwait, Overland—1939
  • Back to Work!
  • A New Hospital, a New Nurse
  • Cases
  • Ayisha, and My Other Patients
  • Spring
  • With Norman in India
• 6. The War Years
  • Back to the U.S.A., January 1942
  • Divorce
  • The Dahanu Road Mission Hospital (India)
  • Monsoon
  • Asked Back
• 7. Kuwait Practice Renewed, 1945
  • New Faces
  • New Cases
  • New Problems
  • Four Months at Qatar, 1948
  • Changes and Obstetrics in Kuwait
  • Oman, 1949
  • Running the Show in Kuwait
  • Slaves
  • To U.S.A. on Furlough, 1950
  • Kuwait Builds, 1951
  • Cars and Schools
  • Kuwaiti Women’s Lives and Health in the 1950s
  • The Morning Clinic
  • Kuwait Women’s Medical Report to the Board—October 1954
• 8. Questions of Mission
  • A Question of Mission
  • Kuwait Hosts the Annual Mission Meeting, 1955
  • Shirley and the Shaikh
  • Kuwait Internationalizes
  • Ramadan and Clinics, 1954
  • Converts
  • Another Question of Mission: Air-Conditioners
  • Mission 1955-1956
  • The Board Reassesses the Missions
  • Applying the Board’s Suggestions
  • Iraq’s Threat; Kuwait’s Growth
  • A New View of Islam
• 9. Changes in the Mission Field, 1958
  • Back to the Mission
  • Fresh Recruits
  • The Sixties in Kuwait
  • My Brother, Paul Bruins
  • Times of Sorrow
  • Furlough, 1964-1965
• 10. Bahrain
  • Bahrain’s Historical Background
  • Mission in Bahrain
  • Cases
  • The Closing of Kuwait’s Medical Mission, March 1967
  • Interlude in Oman, 1968
  • Back to Bahrain, Fall 1968
  • Vacation in Kuwait, 1968
  • Bahrain, 1970
  • Back to the U.S.A.
  • The Way Back: Bahrain’s New Church
• 11. Oman
  • Oman, 1971
  • Historical Background of Oman
  • The Mutrah Hospital
  • The Mutrah Morning Clinic
  • Malaria
  • Cholera
  • Leprosy
  • Tazeea for Dr. Wells Thoms, October 1971
  • Diversions, 1972
  • Travels in Oman, October and November 1972
  • Kuwait Revisited
  • My Last Year
  • Return to Dahanu Road
  • Cholera Epidemic
  • Turnover
• Statistics and Hospital Data
  • Annual Reports of the Kuwait Women’s Hospital to the Mission Board in New York
  • American Mission Hospital—Kuwait
  • Bahrain Attendance Records for Eleven Months of 1969
  • Oman Mission Hospitals—Statistics, June 1 to Dec. 31, 1971
  • Mutrah, Oman: Hospital Statistics, 1973
  • Muscat, Oman: Assaada Hospital Statistics, 1973