iSSv 
 
 
 HOSPITAL AT YU YAO-CENTRAL CHINA 
 
 The Board of Foreign Missions 
 of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. 
 156 Fifth Avenue, New York 
 
A NEW DAY IN MEDICAL MISSIONS 
 
 Whatever may be the outcome of the 
 League of Nations, the War has fostered 
 a new league of humanity, introduced a 
 new era of philanthropy, and ushered in a 
 nciv day for medical missions. 
 
 The War was world wide. Mission lands 
 did not escape. Neutral nations as well as 
 those allied on either side of the conflict 
 were alike sufferers. Eighteen of the twen- 
 ty-seven missions of the Presbyterian 
 Board are in lands which were directly af- 
 fected by the War, either as belligerents, 
 like Japan, China, Siam, and Guatemala; or 
 as dependencies of belligerent nations, like 
 India, Syria, Chosen, the Philippines, and 
 West Africa; or as nations which were 
 caught between the upper and nether mill- 
 stones of the opposing forces and therefore 
 made helpless sufferers, like Persia. Some 
 of our missionaries were exposed to peril 
 from the violence of fighting men who were 
 not held in check by their officers who, 
 perhaps as in the case of the Kurds, were 
 as savage as their followers. Other mis- 
 sionaries were endangered by mobs, not be- 
 cause they were personally hated, but be- 
 cause they were so situated that they were 
 involved in the common tumult. Still oth- 
 ers, a far larger number, were imperiled by 
 pestilence. Typhus fever raged to a fright- 
 ful degree among the starving refugees, 
 particularly in Persia and Syria, and that is 
 a disease which spares no one, whether 
 physician, nurse, or patient. Famine raged 
 in a number of fields, and while the support 
 of the Board provided necessary food for 
 the missionaries, it was impossible to feed 
 the hundreds of thousands of famishing 
 people. The Board and its officers loyally 
 cooperated with the relief committees which 
 were organized in America. On the field 
 nearly all of the millions of dollars that 
 were secured and the hundreds of tons of 
 food that were distributed were handled by 
 
 2 
 
foreign missionaries, the Presbyterian mis- 
 sionaries doing practically all of this work 
 in Persia and Syria. 
 
 The task of the medical missionary and 
 the opportunity for service were greatly 
 augmented because of famine, pestilence, 
 the ravages of disease, the depleted vitality 
 of the people, the large increase of orphan 
 children, and the thousands of old people 
 rendered helpless by the War. More than 
 300 of the 1,364 missionaries associated 
 with the Board were directly engaged in 
 some form of relief. 
 
 COOPERATION 
 
 The great word in the War was coopera- 
 tion. It was not only an allied army at the 
 front which won battles, but the forces be- 
 hind the lines, often in far-distant lands 
 where suffering reigned supreme, that uni- 
 ted in loyal and helpful service. An ex- 
 cellent example of this cooperation was 
 seen in the work done in connection with 
 the Presbyterian mission hospital in Heng- 
 chow, China. A civil war, accentuated by 
 the World War, was raging in China. North 
 and South were in deadly conflict. The 
 hospital at Hengchow became the medical 
 headquarters of the Red Cross Society. The 
 regular hospital staff, assisted by Chinese 
 physicians and numerous missionary and 
 lay assistants from the community, carried 
 on a cooperative medical work typical of 
 that which was being done throughout the 
 whole mission world. 
 
 Of the hospital at Hengchow it was writ- 
 ten: 
 
 “The whole place was a mass of beds; 
 beds in the corridor, rows of beds in 
 the adjacent temple, rooms in the 
 Woman’s Hospital and in the dispens- 
 ary all filled with beds. Bands of wom- 
 en were engaged in preparing an ade- 
 quate supply of bandages, swabs, and 
 other supplies. The Girls’ School and 
 
 3 
 
the women from the church, super- 
 vised by trained nurses, did the prelim- 
 inary rolling. All the supplies of cloth- 
 ing which could be found in the town 
 had been gathered and put to active use. 
 Two men were continually washing and 
 drying bandages and dressings, and 
 there were rolled daily some 200 band- 
 ages. There were 7 dressing tables in 
 operation during the greater part of the 
 day. Six coolies were continually car- 
 rying patients. School boys from the 
 mission schools were assisting doctors, 
 nurses, and probationers. It was a fine 
 bit of cooperation — missionary. Red 
 Cross, and the entire community, Chris- 
 tian and non-Christian.” 
 
 In Syria all the members of the mission, 
 36 in number, were engaged in some form of 
 relief work. This was also true of the 75 
 missirnaries in the 9 stations of the East 
 and V/est Persia missions, who were either 
 engaged in war service, or feeding starving 
 Moslems, Syrians, Persians, Kurds, and 
 Armenians, or buying wheat or tools and 
 farming implements or clothing, or caring 
 for the sick, and in some cases acting as 
 consular agents for the United States Gov- 
 ernment. Three of the Syria mission force 
 were deported because of activities in relief 
 work. 
 
 “Relief work,” reads the report of the 
 Syria mission, “has consumed much of 
 the time of the missionaries. The sight 
 of many dying in the streets from 
 starvation and disease, and the con- 
 stant cries of ‘hungry, hungry,’ have 
 given us such physical wear and tear 
 that no one has been up to normal 
 strength and capacity. Typhus, chol- 
 era, malaria, malnutrition, insufficient 
 clothing, and grip claimed thousands.” 
 
 The story of Persia is even more lurid. 
 There the missionaries were practically the 
 only agents of the Committee for Arme- 
 
 4 
 
nian and Syrian Relief (now “The Near 
 East Relief”) in distributing relief funds. 
 War raged continually. Hostile armies 
 ravaged the country, destroyed crops, killed 
 the men and boys, and carried helpless 
 women and girls into captivity. Hospitals 
 were seized and looted and hospital stores 
 taken. Practically the entire nation of 
 Nestorians were compelled to flee from 
 Urumia, and thousands of them lost their 
 lives. But in the face of war, of pestilence, 
 of famine, of much illness in the mission 
 force, the missionary physician and his no 
 less noble clerical and lay assistants la- 
 bored on among these people, many of the 
 missionaries making “the supreme sacri- 
 fice” in their efforts to save the lives of 
 others. The physician had to face such 
 conditions as these: 
 
 “Tales come from the south of starv- 
 ing people eating each other and their 
 own children, people like dogs and birds 
 of prey eating any kind of flesh, no 
 matter how long dead. There are no 
 dead horses, for as soon as one dies 
 people pounce upon the body for food.” 
 The wife of a missionary physician thus 
 writes of conditions in Urumia: 
 
 “One of our yards in the city is now 
 sheltering over a thousand Moslems, 
 and a thousand Kurds are here at the 
 hospital. We have a whole village of 
 Moslems and Kurds living in our sta- 
 bles, chicken houses, and buggy sheds. 
 Our cows at home are clean, compar- 
 ed with the indescribable filth of these 
 refugees.” 
 
 It is difficult to convey a true conception 
 of the service which the medical missionary 
 rendered. Operations were performed on 
 the roofs of houses, sick children had to be 
 placed on the balconies of missionary homes 
 (where many of them died), and at times 
 in and around the mission premises one 
 could not step without touching the sick 
 
 5 
 
and dying, the starving or the dead. The 
 story of Persia, when fully told, will reveal 
 a new day in the history of medical and 
 philanthropic missions, but it is a story of 
 wonderful cooperation, a marvelous use of 
 the latest medical science, and a fine ex- 
 ample of Christian sacrifice. 
 
 PREVENTION 
 
 Another great word in the War was 
 prevention. One of the largest medical fruits 
 of the War was the value of preventive 
 medicine. This was well stated in a letter 
 by Dr. David Bovaird who is the honorary 
 medical adviser of the Presbyterian Board, 
 who from the entrance of the United States 
 into the War, first in camps in this country 
 and then on the battlefront, was engaged in 
 medical military service. Dr. Bovaird wrote 
 as follows: 
 
 “One of the really startling results 
 (to me) of experience in the medical 
 work of any army is the comparative 
 unimportance of what is done for the 
 individual in the way of treatment, 
 either medical or surgical, when weigh- 
 ed against the tremendous influence of 
 the measures that affect the army as a 
 whole. Changes in treatment save a 
 life here and there, or perhaps a few 
 hundred lives, and it may be that these 
 few lives are of great value, but the big 
 things are the measures of preventive 
 medicine, sanitation, and hygiene, which 
 touch the whole mass of millions of 
 men, and when properly employed, save 
 tens of thousands.” 
 
 The greatest things to be done in the 
 Orient lie among these lines — the preven- 
 tion of disease among the teeming millions. 
 The possibilities of service in this field are 
 almost unlimited. 
 
 The War merely accentuated a movement 
 which for years has been gaining momen- 
 tum in the Orient. The Chinese Medical 
 
 6 
 
Missionary Association, composed of all the 
 medical missionaries in China, was organ- 
 ized some 30 years ago. It was not, 
 however, until 1910 that the Association ap- 
 pointed a committee to prepare literature 
 on the subject of disease prevention. In 
 1912 the Young Men’s Christian Associa- 
 tion, cooperating with the China Medical 
 Missionary Association, began a “Public 
 Health Educational Campaign.” In 1916 a 
 National Medical Association, composed of 
 all native practitioners of modern medicine 
 in China, was organized. These three or- 
 ganizations — the National Committee of 
 the Y. M. C. A., the China Medical Mission- 
 ary Association, and the China Medical As- 
 sociation — organized a “Joint Council of 
 Public Health Education,” with the purpose 
 of unifying the activities of the three organ- 
 izations. Campaigns were held in various 
 cities, in which stereopticon lectures were 
 given with talks on sanitation, health charts 
 and diagrams exhibited, and many meetings 
 held, both with the literati and the common 
 people, in which a full discussion of the 
 value of preventive medicine was had, data 
 given, and concrete examples furnished, 
 which were most convincing to the Chinese 
 mind. 
 
 The China Medical Board, organized in 
 1914 by the Rockefeller Foundation, was 
 designed to bring to China the best results 
 of modern medical research along all lines, 
 with special reference to the teaching of 
 hygiene and sanitation and the prevention 
 of disease. In pursuance of this aim, the 
 China Medical Board, after the consulta- 
 tion, agreed to cooperate with the existing 
 Mission Boards in connection with their 
 medical work in China. This is possibly 
 the greatest forward movement in medical 
 missions in the last few years. Money and 
 men are furnished by the China Medical 
 Board to hospitals and medical schools of 
 Mission Boards, the basis being that the 
 China Medical Board gives three-fourths of 
 
 7 
 
the amounts required, and the Mission 
 Boa’'d furnishes the additional one-fourth. 
 
 The War has revealed hov^r much, even in 
 Er pean countries, there is need of pre- 
 vent’ve medicine. If this is true in civilized 
 Europe, much more is it true in countries 
 like China and India and Africa, where 
 sar? tation and hygiene are practically un- 
 known. In India the Woman’s Christian 
 Mec'cal College at Ludhiana is one of the 
 fev7 institutions for the education of women 
 in i^ndia in modern medicine, and the only 
 one that is not coeducational. This College, 
 in addition to medical training, has a course 
 in pharmacy and a three years’ nursing 
 cor se. Here again coof’cratioii is domi- 
 nart, for the cooperating Boards are: 
 Northern Presbyterian, United Presby- 
 te n, Canadian Presbyterian, Church of 
 England Zenana Mission, Church Mission- 
 ary Society, Northern Methodist, United 
 Free Church of Scotland, Church of Scot- 
 land, Zenana Bible and Medical Mission, 
 an 1 New Zealand Mission. 
 
 The Severance Union Medical College at 
 Sectil, Chosen, embraces all the Presby- 
 terian and all the Methodist bodies at work 
 in Chosen, and the Society for the Propa- 
 gation of the Gospel. 
 
 The training of native women as nurses 
 has been greatly increased in the last few 
 years. The War made as great demand for 
 nurses as for physicians. In 1918 the Har- 
 riet House School for Girls in Bangkok, 
 Siam, sent three of its teaching force to the 
 Philippines to take up the study of nursing 
 and medicine, two of them to fit themselves 
 to become women physicians in Siam, and 
 the third to become a trained nurse. These 
 young women went to the Philippines at 
 their own expense and are the forerunners 
 of a great army in mission lands who will 
 become assistants to the medical mission- 
 aries. One of our Urumia missionaries, now 
 engaged in reconstruction work in Meso- 
 potamia, writes: 
 
 8 
 
“One of the interesting things is that 
 80 of our girls are being developed into 
 quite capable nurses in the hospitals. 
 Many who accepted this training were 
 mountain girls or from the poorest of 
 the plain villages, ragged, unkempt and 
 generally unpromising in appearance. 
 They took hold of the work with inter- 
 est, and the transformation that has 
 taken place is astonishing. Even the 
 faces of the girls have taken on a new 
 character indicative of purposefulness 
 and self-respect.” 
 
 INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 The new day in medical missions is seen 
 in the actual realization on the part of the 
 Oriental of the service of the medical mis- 
 sionary. There is a certain contagion about 
 philanthropy. The philanthropic spirit 
 which swept over America and which en- 
 abled one relief committee to raise over 
 $20,000,000 simply for Orientals, affected all 
 Latin America, and, in a more or less de- 
 gree, the entire world. For example, in 
 Vera Cruz in the midst of the War a native 
 Mexican preacher interested a young drug- 
 gist and a group of young people in a Chris- 
 tian Endeavor Society, and persuaded them 
 to open a dispensary for the suffering poor. 
 The dispensary was begun with a big bottle 
 of quinine and great faith. Thirty firms 
 gave of their drugs the first year, and many 
 people gave of their time and labor for the 
 erection of a dispensary building, as well 
 as money for the medicines. Four Mexican 
 physicians gave their services. The patients 
 range from four years of age to over 80, 
 and represent many nationalities. This was 
 born in the thought of a native preacher. 
 In a large way this growing realization of 
 obligation is seen in the report of the sec- 
 ond American Child Welfare Congress 
 which was held in the City of Montevideo, 
 Uruguay, May 15th-25th. The Rev. W. E. 
 
 9 
 
Browning, one of the missionaries of the 
 Presbyterian Board, and Educational Sec- 
 retary of the Committee on Cooperation 
 in Latin America, was appointed to repre- 
 sent the United States at this Conference. 
 The Conference was attended by represen- 
 tatives from all Latin American countries, 
 and discussed numerous questions relating 
 to child welfare. 
 
 Among the many actions taken by the 
 Congress was one creating an International 
 American Bureau for Child Welfare, “which 
 shall be the center of study and propa- 
 ganda in America of all questions relating 
 to the child.” The questions discussed re- 
 lated to the physical, mental and moral 
 being of children, and special reference to 
 questions of sanitation and hygiene as re- 
 lated to the upbringing of the child. 
 
 The idea has spread throughout mission 
 lands. 
 
 Certain prominent statesmen in America 
 see subtle dangers in the new international- 
 ism which lies hidden in the League of Na- 
 tions. The entrance of the United States 
 into world politics is feared by many, but 
 whatever may be the dangers political from 
 this step, there can be no doubt that in 
 medicine at least there must be a new in- 
 ternationalism. In an address delivered in 
 the City of New York in June, 1919, by a 
 prominent physician, it was said; 
 
 “The world has just passed through, 
 indeed is still passing through, per- 
 haps the greatest medical calamity of 
 history — the epidemic of influenza. No 
 part of the world as a whole has es- 
 caped this epidemic — the greatest catas- 
 trophe of medical history. It has killed 
 more people and caused more misery 
 than any other epidemic of the same 
 length of time. It had its origin in the 
 tablelands of Turkestan.” 
 
 The last sentence is germane to our 
 theme: “It had its origin in the tablelands 
 
 10 
 
of Turkestan.” The diseases of non-Chris- 
 tian lands enter Christian lands without 
 being invited, nay, more, the diseases es- 
 cape the most vigorous quarantine officials. 
 
 Internationalism in medicine is making 
 rapid strides. In 1911 the pneumonic plague 
 raged in North China. Dr. Charles Lewis, 
 a missionary of the Presbyterian Board at 
 Paotingfu, was employed by the Govern- 
 ment to fight the spread of the disease. His 
 heroic services were honored by the local 
 preventive society of Paotingfu, this so- 
 ciety being made up of the highest officials 
 of the city. In 1918 the plague was again 
 rife in North China and Manchuria and it 
 was feared it would descend rapidly into 
 the very heart of China. Again the officials 
 not only asked Dr. Lewis, but gave him ab- 
 solute authority to destroy property and to 
 issue orders of the severest character, and 
 to use the most stringent measures in order 
 to wipe out the disease. 
 
 One of the Presbyterian missionaries of 
 Nan, Siam, has waged a crusade against 
 hookworm. H. S. H., Prince Bovardej, 
 Viceroy of the Northern Provinces, visited 
 Nan and through his influence permission 
 was obtained to treat 100 soldiers at the 
 barracks for hookworm, in order to ascer- 
 tain the percentage of infection. The con- 
 ditions of the test were: diagnosis before 
 treatment; blood test; and a history of each 
 individual before treatment was adminis- 
 tered. The results showed the following 
 percentages of infection: hookworm 100 
 per cent.; round worms, 55 per cent.; tape 
 worms, 28 per cent.; pin worms, 25 per cent. 
 The mental and physical improvement has 
 been so satisfactory that the commanding 
 officer is seeking permission to have all the 
 soldiers treated. 
 
 These are only indications of the vast pos- 
 sibilities of the internationalization of medi- 
 cine. The whole subject of preventive 
 
 II 
 
medicine is but in its infancy. Under date 
 of July 18, 1919, an Associated Press dis- 
 patch from Paris makes the following sig- 
 nificant statement: 
 
 “The most important medical expe- 
 dition ever organized to fight typhus 
 will leave Paris in a few days to try to 
 stamp out the disease in Poland, and to 
 attempt to avert a threatened epidemic 
 in Central Europe this winter. . . Amer- 
 ican and British army authorities have 
 sold Poland the larger part of their de- 
 lousing equipment, and the Polish Min- 
 ister of Health is gathering all such 
 equipment left behind by the Germans. 
 
 “Eight hundred railway cars and 700 
 motor trucks will be required to trans- 
 port the equipment and chemicals of the 
 American Medical Expedition. Per- 
 mission has been obtained to go 
 through German territory to Poland. 
 
 “Typhus now is said to be epidemic 
 from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Nev- 
 ertheless, it is hoped the expedition can 
 exterminate the typhus-bearing lice be- 
 fore cold weather permits the disease 
 to become virulent. The inter-Allied re- 
 lief expeditions throughout Poland are 
 giving every possible assistance to the 
 people. It is planned to disinfect peo- 
 ple, their clothing, and their homes.” 
 The War has left the world a sick world, 
 a diseased world. Other great expeditions 
 will have to be organized in Christian lands 
 if the diseases, many of them growing out 
 of war conditions, are to be successfully 
 combated. The new day in medical mis- 
 sions CALLS FOR A UNITED SERVICE OF THE 
 HEROIC AND SELF-SACRIFICING TYPE. 
 
 ABRAM W. HALSEY. 
 
 November. 1919 
 
 Form 2683