Medical missions in China
Medical missions in China by Catholic and Protestant physicians and surgeons of the 19th and early 20th centuries laid many foundations for modern medicine in China. Western medical
Background
The first hospital in China was reportedly founded by the poet
There is no evidence that the
In 1569 the
Protestant medical missions
The first western medical effort in China was the foundation of a public dispensary for Chinese at Macau in 1820 by the Robert Morrison and John Livingstone, who was a surgeon to the East India Company. Although Morrison was not a medical practitioner, he had studied briefly at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. One of the objects of Morrison's dispensary was to discover whether the Chinese Pharmacopoeia "might not supply something in addition to the means now possessed of lessening human suffering in the West." Morrison stealthily purchased a collection of over 800 volumes of Chinese medical books, along with a collection of Chinese medicines. A Chinese physician, Dr. Lee, directed the dispensing of medicines, with a herbalist in attendance to explain the properties of articles supplied by him.
A significant moment occurred in 1828, when Dr.
Parker quickly realized the need for trained Chinese help, and trained his first medical student Kwan Ato in 1836. Parker introduced both ether and chloroform anesthesia to China. His medical school is most remembered because of Dr.
In 1835-36 Parker and Colledge and a few Christian foreign residents formed the Medical Missionary Society of China. In a little time the news of Parker's mission spread. Public preaching was not permitted in China, and foreigners were restricted to residence at the Thirteen Factories at Canton. But the new hospital appealed to the Chinese in spite of their suspicions. In a Chinese village, married women would sit all night in the streets in order to get a chance in the line of patients crowding upon the doctor the next morning. When the First Opium War closed Parker's hospital in 1840, 9,000 severe cases had been relieved besides uncounted minor ones.[5]
In 1839 there were only two missionary physicians in China; by 1842 more reinforcements had arrived. 50 years later there were 61 hospitals and 44 dispensaries, 100 male and twenty-six female physicians, with a corps of trained native assistants connected to the missionary endeavor. Before the spread of Western methods in China, the Chinese generally had had little knowledge of surgery, but demand for surgical treatment soon far exceeded the capacity of the mission hospitals. In the annual reports of the hospitals in 1895 it was reported that annually no fewer than 500,000 individuals were treated and about 70,000 operations performed, of which about 8,000 were for serious conditions. At first the Chinese had to learn to have confidence in the surgeons, and submit calmly to the severest operations. A patient's relatives were consulted, and usually there were no resentments expressed if a dangerous operation failed.[6]
The motives that brought physicians to China to work in mission hospitals were often a puzzle to the Chinese in the beginning. According to an 1895 dissertation by Charles Estes Sumner, the patients, who were being treated with gentleness and skill that seemed almost miraculous to them, often felt that the religion that had inspired such work must be good. He explained that a few showed no gratitude, thinking that they have rendered a service in allowing a foreigner to treat them, and that many had no desire to accept the religion of their doctors, though some did. It was his belief that many patients converted to Christianity after they returned to their distant homes.[6] This account paints an Orientalist picture of the Chinese and their ingratitude to an assumed noble Christianity, which is indicative of early Western paternalism in regards to the treatment of Asians.
Western medical literature in the Chinese language was first provided by the medical missionaries, and native physicians were trained in Western methods for the first time by them as well.
Western medicine was introduced to China in the 19th century, mainly by medical missionaries sent from various Christian mission organizations, such as the
Due to the social custom that men and women should not be near to one another, the women of China were reluctant to be treated by male doctors of Western Medicine. This resulted in a tremendous need for female doctors of Western Medicine in China. The Women's Foreign Missionary Society hoped alleviate the suffering of Chinese women by sending Dr.
There were peculiar dangers even in this humanitarian work. In times of trouble, stories were circulated that the foreign doctors plucked out human eyes to make charms. The Yangzhou riot of 1868 was caused by this kind of misunderstanding.[20] When the Bubonic plague broke out in Canton and Hong Kong in summer 1894, a rumor was started that foreign doctors were killing the people by scattering scent-bags, one whiff of which would cause death, and at one point a general uprising was being planned to kill the foreigners.
Most of the early mission hospitals began with often only one medical missionary, and no other trained staff. One of the first mission hospitals was the "Chinese Hospital" operated by the
In 1850,
The Taiping Rebellion interrupted the progress of medical missions until 1865, when mission hospitals and medical schools began to be established and organized more permanently. The Tung Wah Hospital was established at Hong Kong, and the medical services of the Chinese Maritime Customs with their valuable medical reports began during this period. The Customs Medical Service's doctors did not normally treat native patients.
Sir Patrick Menson was on the staff of the "Amoy Missionary Hospital". He discovered
In 1880 the London Missionary Society constructed the Tientsin Mission Hospital and Dispensary, under the direction of Dr. John Kenneth Mackenzie. Dr. Fred C. Roberts brought succeeded Mackenzie and brought the hospital to regional prominence.[28]
Another notable medical missionary to China during this period was
Taiwan
Medical mission work in
20th century
Of the 500 hospitals in China in 1931, 235 were run by Protestant missions and 10 by Catholic missions. The mission hospitals accounted for 61 percent of Western trained doctors, 32 percent of nurses and 50 percent of medical schools. Already by 1923 China had half of the world's missionary hospital beds and half the world's missionary doctors.[31]
By 1937 there were 254 mission hospitals in China, but more than half of these were eventually destroyed by
See also
- Christianity in China
- List of Christian Hospitals in China
- L. Nelson Bell
- Medical missions
Footnotes
- ^ Choa, "Heal the Sick".
- ^ Lodwick, Crusaders Against Opium.
- ^ Henry Otis Dwight et al. eds., The Encyclopedia of Missions (2nd ed. 1904) p 446 Online
- ^ Parker (1905), p.181.
- ^ Ch 6, "Opium and the Approach of War," Gulick, Peter Parker.
- ^ a b Estes (1895), p.143
- ^ Methodism
- ^ Presbyterian Church in the United States
- ^ "回眸:当年传教士进羊城--MW悦读室之岭南话廊--凤凰网博客". blog.ifeng.com. Archived from the original on 2013-03-13. Retrieved 2015-06-04.
- ^ "合信的《全体新论》与广东士林-《广东史志》1999年01期-中国知网". mall.cnki.net. Retrieved 2015-06-04.
- ^ "Pakhoi Mission Hospital and Leper Asylum". Medical Mission Quarterly: 43. April 1815 – via Church Missionary Society Periodicals.
- ISBN 978-1140341796.
- ^ PANG Suk Man (February 1998). "The Hackett Medical College for Women in China (1899-1936)" (PDF). Hong Kong Baptist University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 October 2015. Retrieved 10 October 2015.
- ^ "中国近代第一所女子医学院--夏葛医学院-【维普网】-仓储式在线作品出版平台-www.cqvip.com". cqvip.com. Retrieved 2015-06-04.
- ^ Allen, B.J.; Mason, C.A. (1919). A Crusade of Compassion for the Healing of the Nations: A Study of Medical Missions for Women and Children. Central committee on the united study of foreign missions. Retrieved 2015-06-04.
- ^ "柔济医院的实验室_新闻_腾讯网". news.qq.com. Retrieved 2015-06-04.
- ^ Rebecca Chan Chung, Deborah Chung and Cecilia Ng Wong, "Piloted to Serve", 2012
- ^ "Piloted to Serve | Facebook". facebook.com. Retrieved 2015-06-04.
- ^ Deborah Chung
- ^ Taylor (2005), page needed
- ^ Chusan: the opium wars, and the forgotten story of Britain's first Chinese island, D'Arcy-Brown, L (2012)
- ^ "CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY ARCHIVE Section I: East Asia Missions Part 18: Fukien Mission, 1900-1934, Kwangsi-Hunan Mission, 1911-1934, China General, 1935-1951, and South China, 1935-1951". www.ampltd.co.uk. Retrieved 2023-12-26.
- ^ "Church Missionary Society in China", Wikipedia, 2023-11-20, retrieved 2023-12-26
- PMC 6759087.
- ^ "CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY ARCHIVE Section I: East Asia Missions Part 16: Western China Mission, 1898-1934, and Fukien Mission, 1900-1934". www.ampltd.co.uk. Retrieved 2023-12-26.
- ^ Chang, Zhi-fan (1984). "Evolution of Medical Education in China". Chinese Medical Journal. 97 (6): 435–442.
- ^ Burton, Margaret E. (1912). Notable Women of Modern China. New York: Fleming H. Revell.
- ^ Bryson, Mary (1895). Fred C. Roberts of Tientsin. London: H.R. Allenson.
- ^ Taylor, (2005).
- ^ "Robertson, Cecil Frederick ( - 1913)". livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk. Retrieved 2022-04-14.
- ISBN 9789622014534.
References
- ISBN 978-0-8028-2975-7.
- ISBN 0-340-26210-9.
- ISBN 0-674-66326-8.
- OCLC 1896744.
- OCLC 4259165.
- OCLC 10128918.
Charles Sumner Estes.
- ISBN 962-8402-05-6.
Further reading
- Kaiyi Chen. Seeds from the West: St. John's Medical School, Shanghai, 1880–1952. Chicago: Imprint Publications, 2001. ISBN 1-879176-38-6.
- G. H. Choa. "Heal the Sick" Was Their Motto : The Protestant Medical Missionaries in China. Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1990. ISBN 962-201-453-4
- Kathleen L. Lodwick. Crusaders against Opium : Protestant Missionaries in China, 1874–1917. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995. ISBN 0-8131-1924-3.
- Karen Minden. Bamboo Stone: The Evolution of a Chinese Medical Elite. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8020-0550-0.
- Guangqiu Xu. American Doctors in Canton: Modernization in China, 1835–1935. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2011. ISBN 978-1-4128-1829-2.
- Austin, Alvyn J. Saving China: Canadian missionaries in the middle kingdom 1888–1959. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. ISBN 0-8020-5687-3
- Crawford, David S James Watson, MD, LRCSE - an Edinburgh-trained physician and surgeon in northeastern China 1865–1884. Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh v.36:4. December 2006. pp. 362-365.
- Fulton, Austin. Through Earthquake, Wind and Fire - Church and Mission in Manchuria 1867-1950. Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1967.