THE DAY J MISSIONS LIBI^Y Medical Missions Teaching and Healing "Goyour ways,- heal the sick and say unto them. The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you" LOUISE C. PURINGTON, M.D. Chicago New York Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London & Edinburgh M CMII I Copyright, 1903, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY (.February) Chicago: 63 Washington Street New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Toronto : 27 Richmond Street, W London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 30 St. Mary street Medical Missions : Teaching and Healing Perhaps no life can be lived more abso lutely Christ-like than the life of the conse crated Christian physician. And certainly there is no place where can be found so close an exemplification of this life, in its incidents and surroundings, as in the Orient. If at any time we could be translated to southern India a scene like this might be witnessed: And at even, when the sun was set, they brought all that were diseased . . . and all the city was gathered together at the door. "All day, and every day," said Dr. Root, "we had a steady stream of those that were blind, palsied, lepers, and those filled with fevers and pains." Teaching, and healing all manner of sickness is the daily record, and the human weariness could not be borne but for the divine life. The word is verified: They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. At least two-thirds of the miracles of Christ are miracles of healing. The healing 3 MEDICAL MISSIONS of the soul is more often the climax to His vital touch. When John the Baptist, in prison, in doubt, cries out to know, Art thou he that should come? the answer goes back, Tell John, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. The apostles following His example were sent to preach the kingdom and heal the sick. Peter had a sublime conception of his divine warrant when he said to the lame man, Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee ; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk. woman's work in medicine The medical woman is not a modern dis covery. Eleven hundred years before Christ she was abroad; she attended college in Egypt. She may have gone out in Egyp tian darkness, but she returned in Egyptian light. Within a decade almost, the demand came for a woman to practice in Cairo, the gov ernment to pay the salary. TEACHING AND HEALING The medical woman was no stranger in Greece. Homer brings tribute to her skill, and other records of the time show that she was influential then, as now, in opening the medical profession to women. The mother of Socrates practiced this art. Our knowledge is limited of woman in medicine from iooo B.C. to iooo A.D.; but we do know that she is naturally a physician. There are perhaps one hundred and fifty different varieties of trees, flowers and plants mentioned in the Bible. It would be very unlikely that the Hebrew woman who came up from Egypt, and the women of Palestine knew nothing of the secret of healing virtue hidden in some of these. And by the river upon the bank thereof . . . shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed . . . and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine. In the twelfth century we hear again of women renowned in the medical profession. They taught in the great medical school of Salerno, and later in the universities of Italy. Maria Delia Donne was appointed to a pro fessorship in Bologne by Napoleon Bona parte. MEDICAL MISSIONS In Germany women have been allowed to study medicine, though not encouraged, but even there they have won distinction. One of these in the eighteenth century attended the Duchess of Kent, the mother of Queen Victoria. The medical schools and universities of France, Russia, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Aus tralia are open to women. Standard French medical works draw largely from the opinions and practice of prominent women physicians, Madame La Chapelle, Madame Bovin and others. The Czar of all the Russias decided at one time that "woman as woman did better when she knew nothing and understood nothing," and withdrew the permission to study medicine. An offer of $40,000, how ever, from a lady of the realm opened again the doors of the Imperial Academy. Many Russian women, and many of noble birth, have entered the medical profession. England and America have been in the rear guard in awarding the highest advan tages. However, in England the Henrietta Medical College provides the necessary training, London University also; and in TEACHING AND HEALING Dublin the King's and Queen's College of Physicians. Money has proved a touchstone in Amer ica, as in Russia, and women battered Johns Hopkins so as to open the doors of that cit adel. "The mills of Gods grind slowly." The twentieth century woman does not have to go to Zurich, but if she does we hope she will get the highest degree in the gift of that famous university, as the Baltimore woman did who was refused at Johns Hopkins before the women had coined the way. The earlier unpopularity and ostracism in the movement may be contrasted with the brilliant gathering in Baltimore when the opening of Johns Hopkins Hospital was celebrated. No wonder that Dr. Emily Blackwell, whose medical life has been con temporaneous with the movement in Amer ica, should have been thrilled as she looked back from this occasion to the small begin nings, the poor little dispensary, the difficul ties and discouragements of the pioneers. The path of woman to the highest medical education has had its martyrs and saints. It seems incredible that within forty years a woman physician was denied admission by MEDICAL MISSIONS her pastor, who said, "I can receive no call from a woman who has so unsexed her self." The foundations of our Woman's Boards of Missions were laid in the life and death of a woman physician; when, in 1857, Dr. Elizabeth Shattuck applied to the Mission ary Board to be sent out as a missionary physician, her petition was refused, and the reason given, that the Board sent out no single women. This rejection led to the formation of the Woman's Union Missionary Society — the pioneer Woman's Board— for the avowed purpose of sending single women to the foreign field. Dr. Shattuck could not go to Asia — she laid down her life in medical hospital practice in America — but out of the ashes has arisen the benefi cent woman's work for woman in foreign lands. The evolution seems slow, but when we contrast the open doors of privilege and opportunity in all lands, on the threshold of the twentieth century, with the following incident, which occurred in Boston about fifty years ago, we note the great prog ress: At a meeting of the American Missionary TEACHING AND HEALING Association it was proposed that Miss Brooks, who was about to join the Mendi Mission, should tell how she had been moved to offer herself for that dangerous duty. Before she reached the platform a reverend brother arose and objected to her speaking. "It would be a dangerous prece dent," he said. "If Miss Brooks were allowed to speak no one could tell how many more women would be moved by Divine Providence to go out as missionaries and intrude their speeches upon us." The question was discussed one-half hour, Miss Brooks standing, and it was decided that she be not allowed. Perhaps three thousand women are now engaged in medical practice in the United States. Many are experts in what are called "capital," that is, important surgical opera tions. Of their sacrifices and struggles Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi says, "Where they have not walked they have crept; where they could not take they begged; they have gleaned like Ruth among the harvesters for the scantiest crumbs of knowledge and been thankful. ..." Girls have been hissed and stampeded out of hospital wards, out of MEDICAL MISSIONS amphitheaters where the suffering patient was a woman, and properly claimed the pres ence of her own sex. Near the close of the nineteenth century Miss Field, of China Mission fame, with two lady colleagues, was jeered and hooted at a clinic in Philadelphia by the young manhood of America. In the midst of this scene Miss Field arose and said: "Gentlemen, I have been for eighteen years a missionary in China. The Chinese have no medical science, and superstitious rites are chiefly relied on in the treatment of disease. All the people are in need of medical aid, but the women are the neediest. A Chinese woman would under no circum stances go to a male physician for the treat ment of any disease peculiar to her sex. She would suffer lifelong agony rather than violate her sense of propriety. Her father, her brothers and her husband would even let her die rather than let her be treated by a male physician. Full of sorrow for the sufferings of these women I have been look ing in Christian America to see what hope of help for them might be here. I have been glad to find that in some of our great medical schools earnest and self-sacrificing TEACHING AND HEALING women are fitting themselves for a work of mercy in Asia and other lands. Unless such women learn to do such work well, there is no physical salvation for those afflicted ones. And in behalf of those women who have no medical care while they so sorely need it, I ask from you the courtesy of gentlemen toward ladies who are studying medicine in Philadelphia." What is true of China is true of other foreign countries. A brief glance at the crudities of medical science in Oriental lands will serve to emphasize the need. There are certain characteristics of med ical practice — so-called — common to all. There is no lack of physicians, such as they are. As a rule they know nothing of anat omy, physiology and hygiene, or of a regu lar medical education. They buy and read medical books perhaps, most of which, in Chinese, are taken up with an elaborate system of astrology. The itinerant medical Chinaman enters the profession usually by procuring a pair of spectacles with large rims. His medicine chest is stored with herbs, spiders, worms, snakes, charms, etc. Large doses are pre scribed with very many ingredients — a MEDICAL MISSIONS hundred or two perhaps. A pint is the sometimes very unhomeopathic dose. The following is a sample prescription: Powdered snake 2 parts Wasps and their nests 1 part Centipedes 6 parts Scorpions 4 parts Toads 20 parts Grind thoroughly, mix with honey and make into pills. Dose: — Two to be taken four times a day. The bones of the tiger are considered a good tonic; the tiger is strong, therefore, to take him must be strengthening. In Africa women have preempted the medical profession like everything else. It saves the men trouble. The African med ical woman uses magic; her implements, a basket and a wand. The wand is a double tube partly filled with stones, and this she shakes over the patient to draw out the disease, taking care that there are no close observers! Anatomical science includes such ideas ar these: the liver controls the eyes and is the organ of tears. It is responsible for the temper, and enables us to plan and scheme. In the gall bladder will-power and decision reside. TEACHING AND HEALING 13 If men talk much, or quarrel, they get to coughing and that affects the lungs unfavor ably. The heart is the birthplace of the blood; it governs the organs of the body — even the tongue — and controls our behavior and thoughts. This is certainly Biblical, Out of the heart are the issues of life. Surgery is most primitive. No physician has yet overcome his fear of spirits suffi ciently to use the dissecting knife, nor would the superstition of the people allow it. The jack-knife is a prominent surgical in strument, and cutting a favorite prescription. Dr. Allen, of Corea, when called to treat the nephew of the king, found thirteen native doctors stuffing his flowing wounds with wax. They looked on with amazement while he tied the arteries and sewed up the gaping wounds. We get a glimpse of the power and influence of a Christian physician from the fact that when European and American diplomats were obliged to flee the coast, the home and family of Dr. Allen were guarded. Dr. Annie Ellers, also in Corea, won the royal favor. The king provided her with 14 MEDICAL MISSIONS hospital buildings, and she became the queen's physician. We have only to consider such illustra tions as these of medical practice to get a vivid appreciation of the great need in mis sionary lands. We now turn to note some of the benefi cent effects through the introduction of the Christian physician and the ministry of healing. We shall get a glimpse of what it costs, what Christ-like work it is, and how it sends the Christ-love throbbing through the great pulse of humanity. Foreign mission medical work is as vast and far-reaching as are the countries of the Orient. It includes the Medical Mission aries, the Hospitals and Dispensaries, the Training Schools for Nurses, Sanitariums, Touring and many details not easily listed. This writer makes no claim to be exhaust ive, but the endeavor is to afford a glimpse of what has been, and what is being done in different countries. INDIA Perhaps in India more than in any other missionary country we have an exemplifica tion of the introduction, foundation and espe- TEACHING AND HEALING 15 cially wide-reaching influence and results of medical missionary work. The region called the Punjab, made delightfully famil iar to us by the life of Lord Lawrence, seems to have been the first theater of the mighty propelling force of which the fame thereof has spread into all the land. We have here the first object lesson to the world of the power of both healing and teaching to remove prejudice, gain respect and prepare the way of the Lord in a great wil derness of superstition, error and bad practice. The work was begun by Rev. and Mrs. R. Clark in 1864, the latter a trained medical worker. An official order limited this ministry, and all the time it became more and more evident that the one possible door into this closed country was a medical missionary, teaching with healing. In 1865 William Jackson Emslee, M.D., Edinburgh, went out for this service, a pioneer, and the first medical missionary to Kashmir from the Church Missionary Society. It is inter esting to note in passing that this society has over sixty medical missionaries on its roll, and thirty mission hospitals. After seven years of great service, during which he was offered by the Maharaja, and 16 MEDICAL MISSIONS refused, four times the salary if he would be court physician, he died, but not before an appeal from him led Fannie Butler to enroll herself at the London School of Medicine to prepare for medical work in India. After six years of ample study and qualification she was ready to go, but the degree of M.D. was refused. The commission of the Lord God was upon her, and she could afford (?) to dispense with a title though fairly earned both in quality and quantity in preparation for work. In October, 1880, Dr. Butler left England, the first woman medical missionary to India. This was five years before the Countess Dufferin, inspired by Queen Victoria, and she in the first instance by a princess of Poona, took the first step toward the forma tion of the National Association for Supply ing Medical Aid to the Women of India. For six years Dr. Butler labored in various places, visited England, and after eleven months returned to Kashmir, where a dispen sary was opened in 1888. There were five thousand attendants the first year, some times one hundred and eighty a d?y; a work so beneficent and helpful, that upon the occasion of Isabella Bird Bishop's visit TEACHING AND HEALING 17 to this station she gave ^500 for a new hos pital. Dr. Butler died in 1889. The work in Kashmir, both in its medical and missionary aspect, has had a vivid light thrown upon it in the "Life of Irene Petrie," a Student Volunteer, whose brief term of service, 1894 to 1897, was both startling and remarkable in all that it included. She was a keen observer, noting the dire results from carelessness of the mis sionaries as to health and food. "O that people would only realize," she said, "that God's laws of nature are as binding as the decalogue!" She was a great mountain climber, had crossed the Alps four times, her Bradshaw and Baedeker being her favorite books, next to her Bible. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who bring good tidings might well be the motto of this aspiring soul. She carried with her an outdoor gospel, and no wonder her last journey was a mountain climb. "One long battle with a fatal fever, higher and higher, deeper and deeper into the heart of the mighty mountains it had been the dream of her life to see, and every day a day's march nearer Home." She sleeps to wake in the heart of the Himalayas in the MEDICAL MISSIONS mountains of Tibet-Tibet, perhaps the last country in the world to recognize the mis sionary gospel and the only one where it had not been preached. "Ne dites pas qu'elle est partie: dites qu'elle est arrive." Alcohol is as insidious a temptation in India as elsewhere, and Irene's faithfulness was not in vain when, after a midnight service New Year's Eve, 1896, five of her Easter choir of telegraph clerks signed the pledge. Before leaving the Tibet mountains, we note in the progress of medical work that nearly six thousand cases were treated in Leh in 1899 — a remarkable record when the significance of it is considered. In 1886 we have the first report of the National Medical Aid Association for the women of India, including the Countess of Dufferin's fund. In 1898 there were twenty-eight women physicians, seventy assistant surgeons and as many hospital assistants. Over seventy hospitals are con nected with this work, and, one year, more than a million women were treated. Two native princes gave $190,000, and others TEACHING AND HEALING 19 contributed to its support. The Eurasian medical women are preferred, and a large number are in training, but in general English women have occupied the leading positions in the hospitals. A noble company of women physicians, representing the Woman's Boards of Mis sions and their constituencies, have gone from America. The work of Dr. Pauline Root, formerly of Madura, included in one year the diagnosis and treatment of over nineteen thousand women and children, and the visitation outside, of nearly two thousand patients — the total number of sick people seen and treated, over twenty-one thousand. And yet the need is so great, the hospitals and relief so inadequate, that all that is being done by all the organizations and medical workers reaches but a tithe of the waiting millions. china In China one of the results of persecution and martyrdom may be the more rapid introduction of Occidental methods of hygienic sanitation and medical relief. Some one emphasizes the greatest need of MEDICAL MISSIONS China as 300,000 conscientious native Chris tian physicians. In 1805 vaccination was introduced by Dr. Alexander Pearsons, of the East India Com pany, only eight years after its discovery by Edward Jenner, of England. Dr. Parker, of the A. B. C. F. M., was the pioneer med ical missionary. He was instrumental in the formation of the Edinburgh Medical Mission ary Society, an organization of untold value in reaching the nations; also in connection with Drs. Colledge and Bridgman in organ izing the China Medical Missionary Society reaching millions. Invaluable medical text books were prepared by Dr. Benjamin Hobson, of the London Mission, another pioneer; and later Dr. J. G. Kerr in con nection with the Presbyterian Mission, Canton, has been unsurpassed in the great amount accomplished — nearly a million patients treated, and about forty thousand operations performed, besides text-books prepared. In 1880 there were three great hospitals at Tientsin. From China, as else where, the testimony is clear that the most permanent mission work and the places where there has been the most perfect understand ing with Chinese are those opened by the TEACHING AND HEALING medical work. By such fruits, physical manifestations, the doctrine is learned — a saved body so often means a saved soul. In north China the medical work has made good progress, more than one hundred thousand having been reached personally. Dr. Woodhull, of the W. B. M., and many another, says: "We must make haste. Even a Chinaman can hurry when a wife for whom he has paid gioo is in danger." japan In Japan the conditions more nearly resemble those in England and America, where free hospitals are largely humani tarian. The special advantage in missionary work is that many flock for healing; healing for both body and soul is presented, and blessed results are often immediate. The "good news" spreads and others come and like results follow. TURKEY Turkey, in great centers, has a large quota of educated and many Christian physi cians. Many are trained in Constantinople and Athens; America also has furnished a fine contingent of such workers. MEDICAL MISSIONS It is the testimony of the medical mission ary that the conditions are very different in Turkey than in China and Africa, for instance. There are so many nominal Christians, Greeks and Armenians assenting to religious sentiments as a matter of course, that the healing and teaching are not so closely con nected. The difference is expressed by the native who said, "Enough of that; tend to our bodies now." Dr. Grace Kimball, for merly of Van, is not so sure that the dispen sary work and the preaching should go hand in hand. She affirms that most injurious mistakes have been made in missionary work through an almost superstitious reverence for so-called spirituality, and a correspond ing blindness to the real, every-day, practical needs and problems of the native commu nity. She questions the merits of the diag nosis and medical treatment of one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty new patients a day, and truly such a day's prac tice seems a little over-full. The missionary physician who could com pass such a day's work — ten hours a day running through weeks and months, must come to feel as Paul did, "pressed out of measure, above strength." What shall be TEACHING AND HEALING 23 said of the average devotion and faithful ness of those who work on the home side of the Foreign Missionary line? Twenty-five or fifty cases exhaust the American or European doctor, while a missionary meet ing once a month to hear of and discuss such great interests as these has a limited, often very limited attendance. in conclusion It would be interesting to consider the Training Schools for Nurses, the Sanitariums and other phases of this most important work. The well- trained, competent nurse is often more important than the best of physicians. It is not strange that electric Japan should have been the first to seize upon this idea. A training school for nurses was estab lished in 1887 at Kyoto in connection with Doshisha University. Dr. John Berry was the instigator in this advance movement for practical Christianity, and was ably seconded by Dr. Sara E. Buckley, and she in turn^ by a well-trained superintendent from America. What could be more grateful, more 24 MEDICAL MISSIONS refreshing to tired workers than a home in the hill country? A sanitarium which is a vacation home for renewing and rest? To go up from the hot and dusty plains and breathe the cool and buoyant air of the mountains? To walk among the roses and look out upon the visions beyond? To be nearer Heaven, uplifted, for a season, from the jar and friction and unceasing labor in missionary life? As regards medical work in all lands great lessons are as yet unlearned in modern hygiene. "Prevention is better than cure" is as true in India as in America, in Africa as in London. When the Gospel of Health is promulgated and the cardinal principles of purity and of cleanliness ("next to godli ness") are apprehended; when people know how to live, and what the best hygienic conditions are, we shall not be building so much at the top, but laying more enduring foundations. The education in the missionary hospital of the patie.it who sojourns there, in the laws of health, comfort and cleanliness, is said to be a far greater blessing than the bodily benefit received. Without underestimating the important data contributed to science, as Dr. Neve's to The TEACHING AND HEALING 25 Lancet, and his conclusions as to alcohol, and regarding as we do the influence of the med ical missionary physician as unequaled, still we must believe the way of the Lord is to be prepared by yet more beneficent methods already foreshadowed both in science and better living. YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 05465 8845