Medical missions in China
Medical treatment and care came to many Chinese who were addicted, and eventually public and official opinion was influenced in favor of bringing an end to the destructive trade.Daoists developed breathing exercises, and some vegetable and mineral remedies, but their efforts were made in hopes of gaining immortality rather than for providing therapy.Records from Mongolia mention a man named Aisie (Isaiah) who was a linguist, astrologer, and a chief physician to Kublai Khan under the Yuan dynasty.Jesuit missionaries used a pound of cinchona bark obtained from India to successfully treat the Kangxi Emperor and members of the court for malaria.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.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."Colledge believed that Christians had a duty to help the sick in China, but he was never able to devote his time fully to medical missionary work.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.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.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.[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.[11] The Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (香港華人西醫書院) also was founded in 1887, by the London Missionary Society, with its first graduate (in 1892) being Sun Yat-sen (孫中山).Birdwood Van Someren Taylor was charged by John Wolfe to open iteinerant and mobile dispensaries at Fuh-Chow (1878), Fuh-Ning (1883), and Hinghwa (1894) his largest.In 1875, Sigourney Trask received funding from the Methodist Episcopal Church mission to build a woman's hospital in Fuzhou, which had 1,208 registered patients by the end of its first year.James Junior finally returned to China early in 1949 to serve as a leprosy specialist at Hangzhou, as well as acting as professor of medicine in the Zhejiang Medical College.Cecil Frederick Robertson FRCS, an English Baptist missionary and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, arrived in China in 1909.
missionariesTraditional medicine in ChinaDaoistsimmortalityBuddhismYuan dynastySu ShiHangzhouSong dynastySt Bartholomew's HospitalSt Thomas' HospitalsBuddhist monksMongolialinguistastrologerKublai KhanPekingFrenchJewishMuslimNestorian ChristianFranciscanJohn of MontecorvinoCatholicsJesuit MissionsXu GuangqiMatteo RiccicinchonaKangxi Emperormalariapublic dispensaryRobert MorrisonEast India CompanyPharmacopoeiaThomas Richardson ColledgeCantonthe Canton HospitalPeter ParkerAmerican BoardSun Yat SenMedical Missionary Society of ChinaPublic preachingThirteen FactoriesFirst Opium WarOrientalistpaternalismAsiansChinese languageLondon Missionary SocietyWesleyan Methodist MinistryBenjamin HobsonEdward George HorderChurch Missionary SocietyBeihaiHong Kong College of Medicine for ChineseSun Yat-senChinese Revolution (1911)University of Hong KongLucinda L. CombsMargaret Williamson HospitalElizabeth ReifsnyderMary H. FultonLee Sun ChauCoral WongYangzhou riotBubonic plagueHong KongShanghaiWilliam LockhartDinghaiZhoushanShantung Road HospitalLester Chinese HospitalWilliam WeltonFuh-chowBirdwood Van Someren TaylorFuh-NingHinghwaTaiping RebellionTung Wah HospitalHü King EngParagonimiasisAmerican Episcopal Church MissionleprosariumtuberculosissanatoriumSigourney TraskMethodist Episcopal ChurchFuzhouFuzhouneseTientsin Mission Hospital and DispensaryDr. John Kenneth MackenzieDr. Fred C. RobertsHudson TaylorChina Inland MissionRoyal London HospitalR. Harold A. SchofieldA. J. BroomhallSheng Jing HospitalDugald ChristieMukden Medical CollegeTaiwanJames Laidlaw MaxwellJames Preston MaxwellJames Laidlaw Maxwell, JuniorgynecologyPeking Union Medical CollegeChina Medical AssociationCecil Frederick RobertsonBaptistRoyal College of Surgeons of EnglandShaanxiChinese Revolution of 1911JapaneseWorld War IISecond Sino-Japanese WarChinese Civil WarPeople's Republic of ChinaChristianity in ChinaList of Christian Hospitals in ChinaL. Nelson BellMedical missionsMethodismPresbyterian Church in the United StatesDeborah ChungBurton, Margaret E.