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The Medical Mission

ITS PLACE, POWER AND APPEAL

W. J. WANLESS, M.D.
Medical Missionary under The Presbyterian Board in Western India

AUTHOR OF

" Medical Miss'.ons in India," " Medical Missions," " Facts
on Foreign Missions "

PHILADELPHIA
THE WESTMINSTER PRgS
1906 Jsp*™ 0{ $?

nv

Copyright, 1&38, trv
THl1 TRUSTEES OF THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION
AMD SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK

PREFATORY NOTE.
This little book, while it is intended primarily for
Christian medical students, has been prepared with
the object of stimulating among Christians in general a
deeper interest in the work of medical missions.
The suggestion to prepare such a book came from
the receipt of a large number of letters addressed to
the writer by students ana otners with regard to the
details and general phases of medical missionary work.
The answers to most of the questions asked have been
embodied in the eleven chapters of this little work.
The subject matter is based on the experience of the
writer, for six years a medical missionary in India, on
his general knowledge, after extended study of the
subject of medical missions in different lands, and on
his experience as Traveling Secretary of the Student
Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions among the
/ American medical schools while at home on furlough
*- in 1895-96, during which time he visited ninety out
v2 of the one hundred and eighteen medical schools of
^ the U. S. A.
•1^ The little book is sent out in the name of the Great
ft Physician with the hope and prayer that this humble

4 Prefatory Note.
attempt to deepen interest in the work of his king
dom and to extend the knowledge of a form of mis
sionary work which must lie very near to the great and
loving heart of Him who " himself took our infirmities,
and bare our diseases," may be used of him for thfi
praise and glory of his own clear name. W. J. Wanless.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER TAGE
I. Justification of Medical Missions  7
II. Need for Medical Missions  12
III. Some of the Fields  19
IV. Function of Medical Missions  38
V. Achievements of Medical Missions  41
VI. Influence of Medical Missions  47
VII. Spiritual Fruit  52
VIII. Value to Missionaries  58
IX. Support of Medical Missions  61
X. Qualifications for the Service  69
XI. Appeal to Christian Medical Students  84

11V

THE medical mission.

CHAPTER I.
JUSTIFICATION OF MEDICAL MISSIONS.
It has been truthfully said that " the history of
medical missions is the justification of medical mis
sions." The medical mission is " Christlike in its
uharacter, apostolic in its aim, and invaluable in its
influence.'' Said Dr. David Livingstone, "I am a
missionary, heart and soul. God had an only Son and
he gave him to be a missionary and a physician. A
poor, poor imitation of him, I am or wish to be. In
his service I hope to live, in it I wish to die.'' Of
all authority for the medical mission, our Lord him
self is the best, and he himself the best example of a
medical missionary. " And Jesus went about all the
cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and
preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing
every sickness and every disease among the people."
(Matt. 9 : 35).
It is significant that so large a portion of Christ's
7

8 The Medical Mission.
public life was devoted to the ministry of healing. Oi
the thirty-six recorded miracles performed by him,
twenty-three were miracles of bodily healing and three
of raising the dead. Besides those recorded as having
been healed by Jesus, thousands of others must have
experienced the power of his miraculous touch, for
John evidently referred in part to his works of mercy
when he wrote, " And there are also many other things
which Jesus did, the which if they should be written
every one, I suppose the world itself could not con
tain the books that should be written" (John
21 : 25). It was largely by his miracles of divine
healing that Jesus gave proof of his divine mission,
and the heavenly character of his teaching. It was
chiefly by use of his healing miracles that he estab
lished the validity of his claim as the Son of God and
the Saviour of the world.
Christ's healing miracles had a twofold purpose.
They were primarily performed in order to establish
among men the divine origin of himself and his mis
sion, and secondly to relieve suffering, thus proving to
men God's love for a diseased and sin-stricken world.
" But that ye may know that the Son of man hath
power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the
sick of the palsy), Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto
thine house" (Matt. 9:6). Matthew records of
him after he had passed from place to place healing
the crowds that thronged him, that " when he saw the
multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them"

Justification of Medical Missions. 5
(Matt. 9 : 36). Seven times Christ is .spoken of in
the gospels as having been " moved with compassion "
and in every case the objects were persons having
purely temporal or physical ailments.
John the Baptist, anxious to hear of the fulfillment
of his own prophecy and the outcome of his own
teaching concerning Jesus, seeks proof of the Saviour's
Messiahship by sending from the prison cell and ask
ing, " Art thou he that should come, or do we look for
another?" Speedily the Master replies, "Go and
show John again those things which ye do hear and
see : the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk,
the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead
are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached
to them" (Matt. n. 3-5). Here Jesus himself
emphasizes the importance of his healing ministry
by giving it the precedence in his message, but
only to set forth the truth that after all it was
but the precursor of his gospel ministry. Christ's
healing ministry with respect to physical results
was a unique and magnificent success. With regard
to the souls immediately saved as the outcome of
sickness miraculously cured it was from a human
standpoint a comparative disappointment. There
were most probably thousands restored by Jesus who
not only personally did not accept him as the Mes
siah, but who did not so much as thank him for
the relief received at his hands. Of the ten lepers
cleansed only one returned to acknowledge the favoi

10 The Medical Mission.
by glorifying God. But while the immediate results
were spiritually discouraging their ultimate effects have
been obviously far-reaching and glorious. Hence the
divine wisdom of our Lord was clearly manifest in his
choosing the miracles of healing as a means of proving
his own divine nature and the benevolent character of
his gospel. (See Luke ro : 25—37).
It was after a tour in Galilee where he had healed
" all manner of sickness and all manner of disease "
(Matt. 4 : 23) that he preached his wonderful Sermon
on the Mount. He had previously taught in act what
he now enforces by word. It was thus that he secured
the ear of the multitudes, for " he taught as one having
authority and not as the scribes."
Again we read in Matt. 10 : 1, 7, 8, " And when he
had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them
power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to
heal all manner of sickness and all manner of dis
ease." "And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom
of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the
lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils : freely ye have
received, freely give."
In his prayer for his disciples he says : " As thou
hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent
them into the world" (John 17 : 18). Again before
he ascends to glory he is heard to say : " As my
Father hath sent me, even so send I you" (John.
20:2t). His own commission he passes on to his
disciples. (See Matt. 8:17). He commands them

Justification of Medical Missions. n
to do what he himself had already done in obedience
to God the Father's command. Obedience was the
keynote of Jesus' life. His commands to do were
enforced by his own doing and the injunction to
" heal and preach " was best fulfilled in himself.
Christ's life on earth for us, his blessed example and
the legacy of his commands left us are, therefore, alike
his most strenuous appeal, and our most emphatic
authority to prosecute the work of medical missions,
and by so doing we follow in the footsteps of " him
who went about doing good."

CHAPTER II.
NEED FOR MEDICAL MISSIONS.
Who can estimate the constant and manifold bless
ings which come to us as the result of the devoted
and untiring labors of the medical profession in Chris
tian lands? Then how few of us value the blessing of
this medical movement in the light of heathen igno
rance and cruelty, or compare our own sickness, under
intelligent and sympathetic treatment with the sick
ness of those who are obliged to subject themselves to
the terrible barbarities and atrocities commonly prac
ticed in the name of medicine in heathen lands?
Imagine our own land emptied of its magnificent hos
pitals and medical institutes, its costly asylums and
infirmaries, its elaborate sanatoriums and health resorts,
its faithful physicians, its untiring and sympathetic
nurses, its medical societies and bureaus, its sanitary
commissions and boards of health, and a host of other
institutions as conglomerate in name as they are in
practice, but all established for the relief of the suffer
ing or instituted for the preservation of our physical
welfare. Imagine ourselves shorn of our common
knowledge regarding diseases— their prevention, theii

Need for Medical Missions. 13
cure — as well as of the practical sympathy and earnest
solicitude with which the sick among us are constantly
helped and comforted. Imagine the resultant misery,
the indescribable suffering that would inevitably fol
low in the wake of the extinction of all these blessings
so commonly enjoyed by or available to us all, and
practically without distinction as to race, color, creed
or station in life.
Imagine the epidemics, the pestilences, the plagues
that would speedily sweep the land, if our disease-
preventing and disease-destroying measures were
suddenly withdrawn. Imagine, I repeat, your own
desperation under such conditions of life at home, and
it will help you to picture for yourself the unutterable
needs of the millions who suffer and die within the
precincts of heathenism or under the despotism of
Moslem rule, and with none who are able to intel
ligently afford them relief, and with few who even care
that they suffer.
And dying! Yes and with the frightful mortality of
a soul a second, sixty a minute, thirty-six hundred an
hour — a city the size of Albany blotted out of exist
ence every third day, a St. Louis disaster every half
hour in the day and every day in the year. For
hundreds of decades this incalculable loss of precious
lives, this eternal loss of immortal souls has continued,
and all the while the wretchedness, the pain, and the
misery in the aggregate quicken and intensify. All
this, too, while millions of professing Christians— -and

14 The Medical Mission.
this is the saddest thing of all— millions of professing
Christians in the midst of inconceivable blessings con
ferred on them through the gospel, and oblivious to
the world's groans and agonies complacently forget
the solemn obligation which the very fact of their own
God-given enjoyment implies — the obligation of
sharing with others what they for the most part lavish
upon themselves. Said Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop on
the Exeter Hall platform in London three years ago,
after a tour of the world's mission fields: " If there were
time, I could tell you of things which would make it
scarcely possible for any one entering life without a
fixed purpose to avoid going into training as a medical
missionary." In Christian lands sickness means to us tenderness
and sympathy on every hand. In the house and sick
room there is quietness in the night, there is the
muffled foot-fall during the day. Everything is sac
rificed for the good of the patient. Neighbors vie
with each other in their kindness, and even strangers
are glad to be of service to the sick. Invariably there
is a physician within calling distance, and always
within easy reach. There is the well-trained nurse or
faithful friend always at hand to administer the sooth
ing draught and in every way to secure the comfort
and quiet of the sufferer. But what does sickness
mean to the millions of our fellow-creatures through
out the East? It means to the injured, "cremated
rats," "wax," "rags," and other filth stuffed into

Need for Medical Missions. 15
wounds, " aromatic mud " crammed into the nostrils,
" boiling pitch," or " cow manure," poured or plastered
over wounds to staunch the bleeding and to promote
healing. It means for the sick the superstitious wear
ing of amulets and charms, to prevent or cure disease ;
the swallowing of printed verses from so-called sacred
books to avert sickness ; or the practice of sorcery
and witchcraft to determine the cause, dispel the evil
spirit, or drive out the demon of disease. To others
it means unspeakable torture, such as the slow roast
ing of new-born infants and their mothers before a
fire to promote warmth and to expedite recovery, the
boring of a hole in the sole of the foot with a hot iron
" to let the fever out," the cauterization of the chest
or abdomen with hot irons and flesh-destroying caus
tics for the relief of digestive disturbance or internal
pain. To the supposedly bewitched in Africa it means
being cut to pieces and cast to the wild animals or
fishes, being buried alive or staked out to be eaten by
ants or wild animals. To the insane and incurable in
China it often means tethering to a dog kennel, or to
be driven from home or left to die in a graveyard. In
the late war in China, army doctors were found treat
ing wounds according to the time of day inflicted
rather than according to the instrument or location of
infliction. Even liquid mercury was poured into
wounds to dissolve bullets. To the old and decrepit
in India it frequently means poisoning, often starving
to death.

1 6 The Medical Mission.
Added to all this, in China, and similarly in other
countries, the materia medica consists of snake skins,
tigers' claws, dragons' teeth, wasps' stings, centipedes,
scorpions, horned toads, beetles, serpents' eggs, boiled
spiders, or perchance the broth of human flesh. A
knowledge of therapeutics based on prevalent credul
ity or natural gullibility, of anatomy founded largely
on pure imagination and grossest ignorance, of phys
iology derived from hereditary notions or mythical
conceptions — such is the knowledge that makes the
doctor. Even in the most enlightened of eastern
lands, as in China and India, the " native doctors," so
called, have no real knowledge of the foundation
sciences of medicine ; they know practically nothing
of anatomy, physiology and pathology. The use of
the microscope, one of the most important instruments
of modern physical science, is entirely unknown.
Inherited religious beliefs and hoary prejudices prevent
a minute or detailed investigation of disease and its
causes. Their theories regarding the nature of dis
eases are not only unscientific but often on the face of
them utterly crude and ridiculous. Their practice, if
not in itself a means of torture, is at the best the
crudest empiricism.
Such is still the portion of well-nigh countless
millions of our race, for the relief of whose suffering
there are no physicians, except such as exist in the
foim of devilish witch doctors, ignorant quacks,
superstitious priests, deluding wizards, crafty conjur-

Need for Medical Missions. 17
ers, roaming fortune-tellers, wily astrologers, and a
host of other degraded and superstitious individuals
who, in the name of medicine and religion, profess to
cure disease.
While throughout heathen and Mohammedan lands
these "habitations of cruelty" still obtain, is it not a
fact that in professedly Christian lands faculties of
medical schools enter into dignified competition for
students, and hospital boards for patients, and often
in large cities to the detriment of both the medical
profession and patients? It is also freely acknowl
edged that in America there are already three times
as many physicians and twice as many medical schools
as there is need for. Grist after grist of doctors —
more than 5,000 a year — are turned loose on this
country where the majority stay either to eke out an
existence or practice because the vocation is pecun
iarily more profitable or socially more congenial
than other callings.
And is it not also true that in some of our magnifi
cent hospitals the wounds of the relatively few are not
only scientifically treated, but in addition elegantly
dressed " to secure primary healing," while the
unwashed, untouched sores of the untold multitude in
heathen lands are left to suppurate, to mortify, and to
kill ? New York City alone has ten thousand hospital
beds,, costing upward of a million dollars a year-
more beds and more money for the sick among two
millions, than are used and spent for the relief of the

18 The Medical Mission.
sick by all the medical missions that exist among a
thousand millions of heathen and Mohammedans.
Surely the need for medical missions is crying
enough, the appeal pathetic enough, the urgency of
the situation intense enough ; and is there not in our
hands strength enough to furnish the means, and in
our medical schools students enough to furnish the
men, that these "murdered millions" may find relief
and learn of better things ? Oh, should not our
humanity, as well as our Christianity, impel us — we
who may and ought to go — to go, and with one
mighty effort of body, soul and mind, help roll
away this load of sorrow and cheer this ocean of suf
fering arising out of heathenism and coming up to us
with its mute, but agonizing cry for help and pity?
In the name of Him who had " compassion on the mul
titude," and in response to him who asks "who will
go for us, and whom shall we send," shall not our
individual and heart-deep response be : " Here am I ;
send me?"

CHAPTER III.
SOME OF THE FIELDS.
China. In point of population and lack of properly
educated physicians, China probably presents the most
needy and extensive of all the fields for the prosecu
tion of medical missions. This stupendous empire,
with a population numbering nearly 400,000,000, is
practically dependent upon a handful of probably less
than 150 American and European, and as many more
educated native physicians. Quacks there are with
out number, but China knows little of scientific medi
cine and surgery, save as it is exhibited in the mission
hospitals and dispensaries.
Says Dr. J. G. Kerr of Canton, for thirty years a
medical missionary to China: "The properties of
medicines are in great measure unknown. Wonderful
virtues are attributed to inert substances, such as
dragons' teeth, fossil bones of tigers, petrified crabs,
pearls, stalactites, deer's horns, and many other things,
some of which are disgusting and offensive. The
real virtues of active medicines are not fully under
stood, and in so. far as they are known their admin
istration is not guided by any rational principle. The
!9

20 The Medical Mission.
exercise of chemistry is unknown, and the physicians
are, therefore, without the basis of knowledge, not only
in regard to the active ingredients of medicines, but
of the constituents of the human body, of its secre
tions in health, and of the products of disease."
The practice of surgery among barbarous or semi-
civilized peoples is altogether wanting, or is of the
most rude and primitive kind. Even among a people
like the Chinese, celebrated for their literary culture
or mechanical skill, and having a medical profession
large in numbers, not a few of whom have attained a
high reputation, operative surgery is unknown. Since
they are without anatomical knowledge no one will
venture to use a cutting instrument, lest death from
bleeding, which they do not know how to control,
should result.
All the numerous diseases and injuries which are
capable of being remedied by the dangerous art are
either maltreated or left to run their course, a
long train of evils being the result. Fortune-tellers
and idols are consulted in almost all cases of sickness.
Disease is attributed to the visitation of evil spirits or
the anger of the gods. To ward off one, and pacify
the other, amulets are in general use. Idolatrous
worship in the sick room is often attended with the
deafening noise of gongs and the explosion of fire
crackers to expel " evil spirits." The case of an old
lady near Peking who had bricks piled on her broken
leg for six months to cure it and keep down the swelling.

Some of the Fields. 21
illustrates the ignorance and cruelty of the treatment
commonly practiced in China.
Dr. Ashmore describes the teaching of anatomy by
the Chinese, in substance, as follows : A wooden
statue of a man is constructed, into which are bored a
number of holes ; a curtain is thrown over the figure
and the student is taught to thrust the needle through
the curtain into certain holes on the statue. There
are supposed to be certain locations represented by
the holes which, if punctured, will allow the exit of
the evil spirit supposed to be the cause of the disease.
The heart's mouth is believed to be a favorable
locality for the " seat of disease," the brain is imagined
to be in the stomach, and the "seat of courage" is
the liver. The bladder is supposed to communicate
with the mouth by a long tube, through which liquids
force their way. The " hole in the heart " is believed
to have a mysterious connection with the stomach,
and to this orifice is ascribed pains of indigestion
from rapid eating, etc.
China alone could immediately fill the hands of
200,000 capable practitioners, and all that is true of
China proper is, with modification and variation, true
of all the Chinese dependencies, — Korea, Mongolia,
Thibet, and Hainan ; also of certain portions of Japan,
particularly the new dependency, Formosa.
The following, from a printed letter of Dr. Rosetta
S. Hall of Korea, illustrates the cruel features of the
treatment of the sick, practiced in that country :

22 The Medical Mission.
" I was called one day to the house of one of the
higher class to see a child who had become very sick
two or three days before, after being carried a long
distance, strapped to the back of his nurse, as is their
custom, with his bare head and the nape of his neck
exposed to the fierce heat oi a July sun. I found the
child in convulsions, and after a careful examination,
I told the father I feared that there was little, if any,
hope of recovery. Both father and mother bowed
before me and begged to ' give life,' as they express
it here. I told them only God could do that, but we
would do all that we could, and I left them medicine
and the necessary directions, promising to return in
the morning.
" Now this child was the only son of these people,
and their love for him was just as strong as that of
fond American parents. Like Americans, they wanted
to leave nothing undone that could be done for their
darling. After examining the little boy I told the
father that he was dying : I could do no more for
him ; that God was surely going to take him very
soon to his heavenly home. Then the father bade
the Korean doctor to again try his skill. The first
thing this doctor did was to make a little pyramid of
a brownish-looking powder upon each breast of the
child and then to set it afire. As it began to burn
the tender skin I begged the father to have it re
moved, and I said to the doctor, ' You know it can
do no good,' but he only calmly smiled as he obeyed

Some of the Fields. 23
the now almost frantic father's command to go on
with his treatment. He then took out from its sheath
a needle, half-way between a darning needle and a
surgeon's probe, in appearance, and this he proceeded
to stick through each foot, the palms of the hands,
the thumb joints, and through the lips into the jaw,
just below the nose. Again I tried to make him stop,
but he said it was ' Korean custom.' I replied, ' It
is a very bad custom,' and that, though in this case it
would result in no further harm, as the child was dying,
yet it was exceedingly cruel. In cases of recovery
from disease, inflammation of these punctured joints is
sure to follow, and often suppuration with death of
the bones so that amputation of the foot and hand
is the only radical cure. Many such cases have come
to me at the hospital."
In India we can boast of a civil service under Great
Britain probably second to none in the world, and
under England's beneficent rule there has been de
veloped a medical service probably unequaled in ef-
ficency by any in the East. It is nevertheless au
thentically stated by Sir William Moore, for years the
surgeon-general of India, that the present system of
medical aid in India, elaborate and expensive as that
system is, does not reach five per cent, of the people.
In the Bengal Presidency with a population of two
hundred and twenty-eight persons to a square mile (in
the United States there are about twenty-three) only
one-fifteenth of the people live within five miles of a

24 The Medical Mission.
dispensary, and there is only one dispensary to every
270,000 of the people. In the large cities where the
greater part of the medical work is maintained under
the government, — as for instance Calcutta, — statistics
show that over one-half of the people die unattended
in sickness either by a professional doctor or by native
quack. In the whole country where disease is gen
erally much more prevalent, more sudden in its onset,
and more fatal in its results than in western lands, the
sanitary conditions are also such that if an attempt
were made to construct sanitary works on the basis of
England's system, it would cost annually more than
the present entire revenue of the country. Clearly,
then, medical assistance is more urgently needed than
in America ; yet, including educated physicians, native
and foreign, India has one doctor to about 300,000
people, while in the United States there is one to every
625 of the population.
The incurable in India themselves form a large
population. It is estimated that there are between
300,000, and 500,000 lepers who roam the country
far and wide, and for whose and the country's welfare
there is no attempt at segregation and comparatively
little at treatment. There are 458,000 blind, the
large majority of whom are blind from childhood and
mostly either because of ignorance on their own part,
or that of their parents, because of malpractice at
the hands of the ignorant quacks, or because of their
residence in remote districts and consequent inability

Some of the Fields. 25
to secure competent aid from intelligent practitioners.
There are 191,000 deaf and dumb, 76,000 insane,
and a host of other cripples and unfortunates for whom
modern medicine and surgery can do little now, but
whose diseases might have been largely prevented
had medical aid been available at the proper time.
Even now but a fraction .of this disabled multitude
have had the benefit of institutions so common among
us for the care and relief of such persons.
Quackery, malpractice, superstition and caste are
yearly responsible for the painful distortion of thou
sands of limbs, for the irreparable loss of thousands
of eyes, for the deplorable and culpable destruction
of hundreds of lives, and for the untold agonies of
multitudes who perchance recover, in spite of, rather
than by the aid of, the barbarous native treatment.
The doctor who bases his therapeutics on the suppo
sition that the pulse in disease has either wind, water or
phlegm in it, and applies a hot iron for the relief of
the most trivial complaints, manifestly is both basely
ignorant and intensely cruel, yet this only illustrates
the knowledge and skill of the average quack upon
whom the masses in India are still dependent for
medical aid, if indeed they are not, in addition, obliged
to run the entire gauntlet of the idol, priest, conjurer and
astrologer in quest of relief from painful disease. But
what of those who, without either quack or intelligent
medical assistance, yearly depart this life in India?
In 1892, 750,000 were estimated to have died from

26 The Medical Mission.
cholera and 4,500,000 of fever. A Dominion of
Canada blotted out of existence by these two diseases
alone in a single year, not to speak of the tens of
thousands who fall victims to smallpox and the vari
ous intestinal diseases so prevalent in the land !
Surely this appalling mortality calls for additional help
in the work of medical missions.
The death rate among the British soldiers in India
was reduced from sixty-nine per mille in 1857 to
fifteen per mille in r 88 2. A death rate among the
natives reduced from fifty to twenty per mille would
mean the saving of 8,600,000 lives a year and prob
ably 5,000,000 cases of avoidable illness. Oh, what
an opportunity for the sanitary expert, what a task
for the bacteriologist, the pathologist and the fever
specialist ; what an opportunity for the Church of
God to save these precious lives, to redeem these per
ishing souls ! An opportunity which brings to the
medical profession tremendous possibilities and to the
Church of God stupendous responsibilities.
The British Government has established in India
over 2,000 hospitals and dispensaries; it has estab
lished several medical schools for .the education of
native physicians and a number of lesser schools for
the training of hospital assistants and nurses. In
addition the medical missionaries, men and women
numbering about T30, have under their charge some
160 medical institutions. But what are all these
combined among the sick of India's 287,000,000?

Some of the Fields. 27
Chicago alone possesses more hospital beds than there
are for the use of the natives in the whole of India.
The Government conducts its medical work chiefly
in the large cities, and cantonment centers, but the
mass of the people live in villages remote from these
medical centers and hence, cannot, if they would, secure
competent medical assistance.* The villages are the
strongholds of disease for which the people have no re
lief. They are, moreover, the hotbeds of vice and of su
perstition. It is there that ignorance is both dense and
degrading. It is in these well-nigh countless villages
that the medical mission in India is most demanded.
The women of India call for thousands of conse
crated women physicians. There are tens of thousands
of sufferers confined in the harems and zenanas of
India who can only be treated by women physicians.
This means that there are millions, who, if they are to
hear the gospel message, must hear it, humanly speak
ing, from the lips and through the work of women medi
cal missionaries.
On the basis of England's supply, India's needs
call for an addition of 190,000 physicians, and even
this would not be half the rate of America's supply.
Are not these facts the "finger of God" that points
out the way of duty for hundreds of us still unsettled
as to a field of largest labor?
* India has 566,000 villages with a population of less than
500 each. 42 per cent, of the people live in villages of less
than 100 each.

28 The Medical Mission.
Africa. The medical mission in portions of the
"Dark Continent" has been less satisfactory from a
medical standpoint than in some of the other great
mission fields, nevertheless, it forms an integral part
of missionary operations all over the land. Africa, to
Europeans, presents the most trying of all climates, it
is the most disastrous to life of all mission fields.
With the exception of parts of Egypt and South
Africa, it were a wise rule that would limit the num
ber who go as missionaries to those who themselves
have a knowledge of medicine, or who could go ac
companied by a physician. The success of missions
in Africa, from a human standpoint, probably depends
more largely upon the inherent ability of the mission
ary to resist the inroads of African fever than on any
other physical qualification.
Owing partly to a better knowledge of the climate
on the part of the missionary himself, and owing
largely to the accumulated experience of medical
missionaries and other explorers who have arduously
labored to secure professional knowledge of the death-
dealing districts in many parts of East, West and
Central Africa, mission work is now carried on at less
risk and loss of life than it once was. And if for no
other purpose than to care for the health of the mis
sionary families, and by his presence to make things
endurable, the medical missionary in Africa is indis
pensable. Medical work for the natives, though apparently

Some of the Fields.

29

unattended in general with the physical results
achieved in other fields, because of the greater preva
lence of superstition and the greater density of igno
rance, is, despite these obstacles, fraught with gratifying
consequences. A considerable number of hospitals
and dispensaries have been established xnd excellent
physical as well as spiritual results have followed. The
work is received with growing intelligence, and is
yearly becoming appreciated more and more, for its
own sake.
The horrible depravity, the frightful cruelty and the
appalling ignorance of the people with regard to the
causation and cure of disease, only serve to intensify
rather than to limit the loudness of the appeal which
the "open sores" of the Dark Continent so strenu
ously and pathetically present. This great continent,
with an area equal to North America and Europe
combined, and until a few years ago largely marked on
our maps as " unexplored " and " sandy desert," is
found to be teeming with a population of two and a
half times that of the United States, and to be surging
all over with disease of every kind. During a day's
visit to Port Said, Egypt, I saw scarcely a native
whose eyes did not present ophthalmia in some form or
stage. If this is the condition in a city where medi
cal assistance is easily available, what must it be
where disease abounds and no physician exists?
African "medicine men" are, all over the land, a
curse rathei than a blessing to the people. They in-

30 The Medical Mission.
crease rather than diminish suffering. All pain and
sickness is looked upon as a judgment from God, and
the most highly-valued remedies are charms. "Al!
they know of medicine is associated with pain. A
wound is plugged with rags or leaves. Fevers are
treated with indifference. Rheumatic pains receive
the heroic treatment of hot irons thrust into the
affected parts. Fractures are allowed to unite
without help, or are handled freely instead of being
kept at rest. Teeth, if extracted at all, are
pulled out in such a manner as to cause tears
to flow and draw forth cries of intense pain.
Tumors are freely punctured with sharp sticks.
Everything must hurt to do good. The medicine
man is an object of dread and fear, carrying around
in his ' bag ' all manner of instruments of torture,
and ' medicines ' having the ugliest and bitterest prop
erties possible to obtain."
In the midst of this great continent a few score
of physicians, government and missionary (less
than seventy-five of them medical missionaries), are
laboring, overwhelmed by the cruelty and staggered
by the ravages of disease all about them. They are
faithfully fighting sickness and death but, alas,
with what tremendous odds ! A hundred thousand
physicians would not be half sufficient to stem the
tide of pestilence and plague that is constantly sweep
ing over the land. The call from Africa is imperative,
pathetic, strenuous. Language fails to furnish terms

Some of the Fields. _, 31
with which to describe the fearful suffering, the ap
palling wretchedness that everywhere abounds as the
result of cruelty and depravity. Ethiopia mutely
stretches forth her hands toward the west for medical
help. Fain would she " stretch out her hands unto
God " but she knows him not. Fettered by the
darkest superstition, and enslaved by inconceivable
ignorance and the most atrocious cruelty, she is still
without the light of the Cross and the knowledge of
Him who was called from her own borders and died to
redeem the souls of her dusky children. Heroes have
bled and died for Africa that they might plant in her the
seed of the gospel. Multitudes are still needed who
shall live and labor to reap the harvest now preparing by
the Lord of the harvest himself. Who will bear to
Darkest Africa the banner of the cross and physical
relief ?
South America. From a purely missionary stand
point, South America is one of the very needy fields
of the world. This immense continent right at our
very door with 38,000,000 of people within an area of
7,000,000 square miles — nearly twice the size of Europe
— has within its priest-ridden borders millions of
souls as destitute of saving Christianity as the darkest
pagans in Asia.
" South America, divided into fourteen countries,
includes people of nearly every race and language,
including the degraded Fuegians of Cape Horn, who
when discovered had drifted so from old traditions

32

The Medical Mission.

that they retained no word for God. The Spanish
and Portuguese element is politically dominant, while
the red men constitute the main stock of the popula
tion. Her cities are among the gayest and grossest
in the world. South America groans under the
tyranny of a priesthood which in its highest forms is
unillumined by, and is incompetent to preach, the
gospel of God's free gift, and in its lowest is proverb
ially and habitually drunken, extortionate and ignorant.''
In a land where Roman Catholicism is so terribly in
tolerant of other faiths and so tyrannical, especially with
regard to a pure Protestantism, the task of disarming
prejudice and of securing desirable approach is ob
viously a most difficult one. Hence the medical
mission is of peculiar value among such people.
In most of the South American republics there arc
native practitioners, who, though comparatively large
as regards numbers, are poor as regards efficiency.
In some of the republics, medical laws require an
indigenous degree or the passing of state examinations
in order to practice. In other parts of the land
practically no restrictions to physicians with a North
American degree exist. Chiefly among the aborigi
nal tribes in the remote districts are medical missions
most needed and desirable, but even in the great
cities they would certainly become a potent influence
for good. In South America, perhaps more than in
any other field, the feasibility of self-supporting
medical missions obtains. Here is a country exhibiting

Some of the Fields. 33
fields and opportunities for Christian medical work,
and possessing a variation of scenery and climate that
leaves few without excuse, who, on the ground of tem
perament, constitution or circumstances maybe prov
identially hindered from undertaking work in a more
remote and trying climate.
South America is indeed the " Neglected Conti
nent." She is morally soaked in sin, she is physically
rotting with disease. While her ignorant millions are
either surfeited with superstition or held in the abject
thraldom of death-dealing depravity, with suffering
enough in this life and practically no hope for the life to
come, with the notorious overcrowding of physicians
in the North Continent and in view of the needs and
obligations of the South Continent, might not the for
mer spare a regiment or two of her Christian physicians
for this field of spiritual desolation and physical cor
ruption ? Thus we might happily interpret the
" Monroe Doctrine" and obey the higher doctrine of
loving our neighbors as ourselves.
" In Persia," says the Rev. S. G. Wilson, " the old
medical practice is very deficient. At its best it is
unscientific, but mixed with superstition it is still
worse. The conjurer and the astrologer are the com
panion of the physician. The Vendidad of Ancient
Persia says : ' If several healers offer themselves,
namely, one who heals with a knife, one who heals
with herbs, and one who heals with the holy word, it
is the latter who will best drive away sickness from

34 The Medical Mission.
the body of the faithful.' The astrologer consults the
stars as to the favorable time for calling the doctor
and which one shall be called, and whether the medi
cine he has given shall be taken."
In Arabia the situation is, if anything, more appal
ling than in Persia. Few countries are in greater need
of medical missions than these two great adjacent
Mohammedan kingdoms of Persia and Arabia,and
in few countries have medical missions proved more
valuable in preparing the way for, and commending the
work of, Christian missions.
The following incident told by Dr. Jessie Wilson of
Hamadan, Persia, illustrates the deplorable superstition
among the people and the consequent difficulties in
prosecuting medical work : " A poor woman was
brought to the dispensary. Her father came in carry
ing her on his back from the other side of the city,
her mother also accompanied her. She was so ill that
she could not hold up her head. I told her mother
that there was no hope of her recovery and that they
must take her home at once, but that I would give
her a little medicine and would come to see her in
the evening. When I went in the evening to her
poor home I asked how she was and they said : ' Praise
God she is better.' By the way, they always use this
expression even though death be at the door.
Imagine my disgust to find she had not touched my
medicine because of the old, old excuse that is ever
newly brought forth— that is, ' some one sneezed and

Some of the Fields.

35

we did not dare to give the medicine.' Instead of
giving my medicine they had got half a bushel of
manure (if you will excuse me for saying it) and had
warmed that and wrapped the poor hot head and fore
head in that, only leaving the face exposed. She was
indeed a sight to behold."
Medical missions have been abundantly blessed of
God in Persia. Missionary physicians have been
honored by appointment to the position of " private
physician" to the highest officials, and through their
work the gospel seed has been sown far and near.
But for the medical missionary, residence by other
missionaries in Persia would be largely impracticable
and their work far less tolerable than it is. Mission
aries and official dignitaries are alike dependent upon
the Christian physician for intelligent medical assist
ance. Arabia's 8,000,000 inhabitants are practically with
out competent medical aid, save as it is furnished by
medical missionaries. The following, from the pen of
Dr. Wyckoff, of Bahrein, tersely describes the need in
the dark land of Ishmael : " In proportion to the
need for medical assistance is its power for good.
There is great suffering in Arabia, and no native skill
to relieve it. The so-called medical treatment by the
natives is cruel in the extreme. Burning holes in the
body to let the disease out, branding sick children
with red-hot bars, chopping off wounded limbs and
sealing them with boiling tar, are only an illustration

36 The Medical Mission.
of their methods. They go blind in the fierce glare
of a tropical sun, when simple eyewater would save
their sight. The medical missionary therefore is a
messenger from God. People will travel great dis
tances to meet him and he is thronged with patients.
Relieved or cured they return with a gospel message
and a portion of Scripture, thus in a small sense
becoming missionaries themselves, and preparing in
the desert a highway for our God, where as yet no
Christian missionary can go."
A small hospital under the British at Aden and
another under the Free Church of Scotland, and the
medical mission of the American Dutch Reformed
at Bahrein — the physicians not numbering more
than half a dozen for the whole land — furnish prac
tically all the medical aid Arabia receives. Medical
missionaries to work as pioneers are especially in
demand in this long sadly neglected land of the Arab.
Eight to ten millions of people in Arabia are practi
cally without educated physicians, save those just
mentioned. What is true of these two countries is
true, but in a less degree, of many parts of Turkey,
yet the need is intense enough in any part, especially
in Armenia.
Sum and Laos are countries in which the medical
mission has formed a very large and important part
of mission work. Here, some six millions of people
are substantially dependent upon the medical mission
aries of the American Presbyterian Board for intel-

Some of the Fields. 37
ligent medical assistance. "The Siamese believe the
human body is composed of two classes of elements,
visible and invisible. The bones, flesh, blood, etc.,
belong to the former, wind and fire to the latter.
The external elements acting on the bodily elements
cause health or disease, as dropsy, caused by too much
water being absorbed into the body during the wet
season. To cure lockjaw, the prescription runs : Por
tions of the jaws of a wild hog, a tame hog and a goat,
of a goose bone, peacock bones, tail of a fish and head
of a venomous snake."
And what of lands yet unoccupied? Indo-
Chinese countries, Afghanistan, Beluchistan, Nepal,
Thibet, with a combined population of more than ten
millions, all await the advent of the educated phy
sician. The Malay Archipelago with an estimated
population of 27,000,000 is practically destitute of
medical aid, save as it is administered by a handful
of less than a score of trained doctors. Some 1050
islands of the Pacific with a combined population
estimated at 9,000,000 are still without the Christian
missionary and Christian physician. "The field is
the world." Turn where we will, go where we may, in
heathen lands the fact immediately confronts us, the
appealing, the appalling fact of a harvest enormously
plenteous, and of laborers desperately few.

CHAPTER IV.
FUNCTION OF MEDICAL MISSIONS.
The function of the medical mission is primarily
physical; it is, however, supremely spiritual. It is
primarily physical, because in the majority of the cases
which it is designed to help, the physical needs are
immediate ones, and what is to be done must be done
quickly. Besides, it is the door of approach and often
the most " effectual door " to the greater and eternal
needs of the patient. How often Christ himself won
entrance to the hearts of sin-sick souls by healing
their bodies. " Himself took our infirmities, and
bare our sicknesses" (Matt. 8:17). He himself
was " touched with the feeling of our infirmities," but
the same Saviour declared : " What is a man profited,
if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own
soul?" (Matt. 16:26). The heart, softened by
disease, is often the most impressionable to the stamp
of God's redeeming love. The relief of suffering is
the duty first at hand, but the saving of the soul is
paramount and supreme, and though the former may
take temporary precedence of the latter in order of
accomplishment, it is nevertheless tributary. More-
38

Function of Medical Missions. 39
over, we do not always know whether it is the will of
God that the patient should recover, and our efforts
to relieve sickness may altogether, or in part, fail, but
we have constantly the assurance that God willeth not
the death of any soul. "That ye may know that the
Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then
saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy
bed, and go into thine house " (Matt. 9:6). Jesus
thus emphasized the importance of his sin-forgiving
mission, while the healing miracle exhibited his sym
pathy for the sick, and proved also his power on earth
to forgive sins. He brought in a full salvation and
" restored wholeness to the entire man." " First a
missionary and secondly a physician," is a rule which
indicates the relative importance of the "teaching"
and " healing " work of the missionary physician.
The one feature that distinguishes the medical
mission from that of the ordinary state institution is
that it combines in itself " the double cure," — healing
for soul as well as body. On the basis of pure
humanitarianism, this mission is clearly worthy of
the heartiest support of the Christian Church, as
as well as that of the State, but if merely physical
results constitute the sole aim of a medical mis
sion it remains no longer a missionary, but becomes
a secular, institution. It is rather " omissionary "
than missionary. The best physical results, however,
are always to be striven for, since it is often by securing
to the patient the largest physical blessing that we can

4° The Medical Mission.
most deepen the spiritual impressions which we seek
to make on him for his own good in particular, and
for the good of the mission work in general.
Medical missions have secured to tens of thousands
of sufferers in heathen lands relief which, apart from
the work of the missionary physicians, would never
have been enjoyed ; but the most lasting results of
this work are spiritual. Yet, if for no other reason,
the purely physical relief afforded to the sick in
heathen lands through medical missions, even if
unaccompanied by spiritual results, is in itself sufficient
to commend them to the support of Christians and
philanthropists everywhere.

CHAPTER V.
ACHIEVEMENTS OF MEDICAL MISSIONS.
All told, there are now approximately four hundred
and fifty medical missionaries, men and women, in
all lands. Since comparatively few medical mission
aries have published separate and detailed reports of
the work done under their charge, it is difficult to
estimate the actual good accomplished by them in
their individual fields. Sufficient, however, has been
published to show that the work has been fraught
with abundant success and blessing. Not only have
tens of thousands of lives been saved, and hundreds
of thousands of persons burdened with disease com
pletely, or in part, relieved, but foundations have been
and are being laid by medical missionaries in heathen
countries upon which medical institutions are being
built up and organizations established for th wide
spread and systematic relief and prevention of disease.
And all this has been accomplished in countries where,
until the coming of the medical missionary, the com
monest surgical and medical measures known to us
for the cure of disease were entirely unknown.
The medical missionary is sometimes the first mis-
4i

42 The Medical Mission.
sionary an generally the first physician in the field
he occupies. His work, though often for a time
obscure, is always the harbinger of fruitful harvest
in the cure of sickness, the precursor of permanent
and widespread blessing to multitudes of helpless and
destitute sufferers.
It has been said that missionaries going to foreign
countries " bury themselves in the darkest heathen
ism." Said an English official to the writer in India,
after having observed the large numbers of patients
treated surgically and medically in our Miraj hospital :
" Sir, it seems to me that you are burying your talents
beneath a bushel. Would you not find a larger scope
for your skill among the more intelligent and appreci
ative people of your own land? " My reply was, that
I was not only content, but happy to labor as a pioneer
in my own department, and rejoiced in being made a
blessing to those whom I knew to be utterly destitute
of reliable assistance, apart from the relief which our
hospital afforded.
But the work of the medical missionary does not
remain forever " beneath a bushel." Even in this life
the compensation of such service brings a hundredfold
reward. Not a few have been rewarded with the
highert professional positions under foreign govern
ments, and some have received imperial decorations
for their skill and devotion in caring for the sick in
times of pestilence. Many, too, having endeared
themselves to the people, have gone to their reward,

Achievements of Medical Missions. 43
leaving names to be held in everlasting remembrance
and filial reverence.
In India, prior to the occupation by Christian
England and the advent of Christian physicians, the
public dispensary was entirely unknown. They had
infirmaries for the relief of aged and infirm cows, but
as for the charitable treatment of their own diseased
and destitute inhabitants they cared nothing. And
even now in India, notwithstanding the large and
efficient medical service conducted under the British,
large districts containing millions of people are solely
dependent upon mission hospitals and missionary
physicians for medical and surgical relief. In a single
mission — The Kashmir Medical Mission — last year
there were treated 12,900 new out-patients, 984 in
patients, and 2,589 operations were performed.
Another, The Travancor Medical Mission, operates
fourteen different medical stations.
Medical women are the only ones who are permitted
to enter the harems and zenanas of millions of the
women, and almost all of the medical women in India
are missionaries, the majority of whom have been sent
from America. There are tens of thousands of sick
women in the central and northern portions of the
empire who would rather die than have a male
physician attend them in sickness and childbirth, but
they welcome our medical women, who are annually
relieving thousands of sick in their homes and tens of
thousands of them in their dispensaries and hospitals.

44 The Medical Mission.
In China the medical missionaries were the first to
establish widespread and systematic work for the
relief of th: sick. They are still practically the only
physicians laboring to educate native physicians
and to establish upon a scientific basis the work of
intelligently treating the sick. Said United States
Minister Denby in his official dispatch of March 22,
1895, to the Secretary of State at Washington: "I
think that no one can controvert the patent fact that
the Chinese are enormously benefited by the labor of
missionaries in their midst. Foreign hospitals are a
great boon to the sick. China, before the advent of
the foreigner, did not know what surgery was. There
are more than twenty charitable hospitals in China,
which are presided over by men of as great ability as
can be found anywhere in the world. Dr. Kerr's
hospital at Canton is one of the greatest institutions of
the kind in the world. The Viceroy Li Hung Chang
has for years maintained at Tientsin, at his own
expense, a foreign hospital."
Dr. Kerr's hospital, to which Minister Denby refers,
was established in 1835 by Dr. Peter Parker, a medi
cal missionary, and was the first foreign hospital
in China. Dr. Kerr, the physician in charge, during
his thirty years of service, has by himself or under
his supervision, treated over 700,000 patients and
performed some 40,000 operations 1300 of which
weie for cystic calculi. In addition he has trans
lated thirty medical books into Chinese and, aided by

Achievements of Medical Missions. 45
his assistants, trained a hundred native doctors. Similar
work of educating the natives in medicine and nursing
is carried on under Dr. Duncan Main of Amoy and also
in other mission hospitals in various parts of China.
In Japan, the need of medical missionaries has in
most parts of the island ceased to exist ; still it was
largely from the missionary physicians that the cue of
medical work was taken and medicine as a science
began to be studied.
The first foreign hospital in Korea was established
by, and is still in charge of, a medical missionary
under the Korean government.
The first and only hospitals in the islands of For
mosa and Hainan were established under missionary
societies and are still the only hospitals in operation
in those lands.
Siam owes all the skilled medical practitioners
whom she possesses to the pioneering labors of medi
cal missionaries. The king's hospital at Bangkok is
now in charge of Dr. Hays, a former medical mission
ary. All the medical work in Laos and practically all
carried on in Siam, outside of Bangkok, is conducted
by the medical missionaries who treat thousands of
patients annually. Three hospitals and six dispensa
ries are operated by the American Presbyterians. A
Siamese nobleman, who had once received a Gospel in
Siamese came to a Laos missionary and, asking to be
healed said, "Christ healed men and you preach
Christ."

46 The Medical Mission.
In Africa the medical missionaries are in most dis
tricts the pioneer and only competent physicians who
labor for the relief of the sick natives.
In the island of Madagascar the only medical work
is conducted by the medical missionaries and those
trained under their care. At the capital a large mis
sion hospital and a medical academy are conducted
under the charge of four medical missionaries.
Already a number of efficient practitioners have been
trained. They enjoy large practices among their own
people. In Beirut, Syria, is the principal medical college
and hospital of Asia Minor, The Johanniter Hospital
College, and it is in- charge of Protestant Christians
and missionaries. More than a hundred men trained
in this medical college are now engaged in missionary
work, and it is safe to say that they annually treat hun
dreds of thousands of the sick.
In Persia the American Presbyterians conduct three
hospitals and ten dispensaries treating thousands of
cases annually.
Indeed in the whole of the Turkish empire and
Persia, the medical institutions, private and govern
mental, which they now possess, were established
largely, if not entirely, as a result of missionary exam
ple in caring for the sick.
Thus it is in some of the Pacific islands and in
other fields from which meager, or no reports have
been published.

CHAPTER VI.
INFLUENCE OF MEDICAL MISSIONS.
Probably no other agency has been so fruitful in
disarming anti-foreign prejudice, in breaking down
caste barriers, and, in general, in preparing the way for
the preaching of the gospel as the medical mission.
The medical missionary has often been able to pene
trate the out-of-the-way places, places where religious
opposition has been most severe and race barriers
most formidable, districts where the severity of the
climate has made it unsafe for any but the medical
missionary to enter. With his healing mission as his
defense and the word of God as his weapon, the med
ical missionary has been able to safely traverse tracts
of country never before trod by Christian feet. In
districts once visited, his return is eagerly looked for.
And in the train of his pioneering labors other forms
of mission work, besides his own, have been duly
inaugurated. For his sake other missionaries are not
only tolerated but frequently welcomed. The physi
cian's presence has not only saved the precious lives
of other missionaries, but has often made the contin
uance of a station possible, when, otherwise, abandon
ment would have been inevitable. 47

48 The Medical Mission.
Government officials and dignitaries have been
reached with the gospel message by the missionary
physician when by others they were unapproachable.
Thousands of homes, harems and zenanas closed
against the clerical missionary have been open to the
Christian physician, and their occupants, for the first
time, have heard the gospel message from the lips of
the person who was himself or herself a physician.
During the writer's experience of six years in India,
it was his privilege to make over seven hundred visits
to people in their homes. Many of these were the
dwellings of secluded women, native chiefs, and high
caste Brahmins, — most of them homes into which the
mere fact of being a physician made entrance possi
ble, and not a few of the natives who at first were dis
posed to obstruct our work, and some of those who
actually did attempt to frustrate our plans, are now
among our best native friends.
Mission stations, too, have repeatedly resulted from
the preliminary labors of the medical missionary.
Officials have been appeased and won over as friends
to the mission cause, building sites and buildings have
been secured, often as gifts from alien governments.
Mission stations have sometimes been established by
medical missionaries at the invitation, and by the
assistance and cooperation, of heathen states. Miraj,
our own station, is a single instance of this. Soon
after our arrival we were publicly invited to begin
our medical work where for several years official in-

Influence of Medical Missions. 49
fluence had prevented the establishment of a mission
station. Stations thus opened in due course inspire,
side by side with the hospital and dispensary, other
forms of missionary effort.
It is, moreover, a fact that not only have individ
uals been approached, homes entered, stations occu
pied and districts prepared by the medical mission
ary, which apparently could not have been effected by
any other class of workers, but whole countries have
been opened up to the gospel .by the elemental labors
of missionary physicians.
It has been said that " China was opened to the
gospel at the point of the lancet "by Dr. Peter Parker.
Dr. Allen, an American medical missionary, was the
first Protestant foreigner to reside permanently in
Korea. He was ultimately put in charge of a hos
pital built for him by the king of Korea, and later he
was also one of a Korean embassy to the United
States Government at Washington.
Formosa was opened up largely by the work of
medical missionaries. Dr. G. L. Mackay of the Can
adian Presbyterian Mission was the first missionary to
North Formosa, and the first to build a hospital there.
At first he had almost to compel his patients to come
to him. During fourteen years of service he extracted
21,000 teeth in his hospital and on tours, and by this
simple operation he has won his way to the hearts of
thousands of people.
Siam is another illustration of a country opened up
4

5°

The Medical Mission.

to mission work largely through the influence of the
missionary physicians, Drs. Gutzlaff, Bradley, and
House who were the pioneer missionaries.
In India states and districts have been prepared
for the gospel mission by its own handmaid, the
medical mission. It is an old but a little known story
which relates that when in the year 1636 a princess
in the family of the Great Mogul had been dread
fully burned, a message was sent to seek the help of
the English surgeon at Surat. Dr. Gabriel Broughton
was sent, healed the princess, and in return was asked
by the emperor to state what he desired for himself.
"Let my nation trade with your nation," was the
reply, and the establishment of the East India
Company's power on the Coromandel coast was the
result. In Japan, during the inception of missionary work,
fields outside of the open ports were opened and held
by the establishment of dispensaries by medical mis
sionaries. At the centers where it was carried on it
broke down the prejudices and opposition of religious
teaching and " opened the way for general evangelical
work." Similarly in the Turkish empire, Persia, Arabia,
and throughout the length and breadth of the great
Dark Continent of Africa have medical missionaries
been used of God in preparing the way for the com
ing of his kingdom.
The establishment of missions has not been the only

Influence of Medical Missions. 51
result of the medical missionary's pioneering labors.
Commerce with western and civilized nations, amount
ing now to millions of dollars annually, is another ot
the significant results.

CHAPTER VII.
SPIRITUAL FRUIT.
Among the immense numbers of patients annually
treated in mission hospitals and dispensariesjhe num
ber of baptisms resulting immediately from the work
is, as a matter of fact, relatively small. This, how
ever, is not surprising in view of past history and
present conditions. The history of our Saviour's
ministry of mercy repeats itself in similar work con
ducted in his name to-day. To the multitude who
had been fed by his miraculous expansion of the five
loaves and two fishes, he said, "Ye seek me, not
because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of
the loaves, and were filled" (John. 6:26). There
are always those who care for nothing but the loaves
and fishes, and some who have not learned to be
thankful even for these. But the majority are mani
festly grateful for the physical good done them, and
many give earnest heed to the word spoken for their
spiritual good. The fact should not be overlooked
that the majority who are the recipients of medical
treatment are themselves profoundly ignorant, theii
consciences are seared, their perceptions are blasted
S2

Spiritual Fruit. 53
and their spiritual apathy is intense ; hence the fact
of their physical need appearing to them the more
pressing, since it is the more tangible, is not to be
wondered at.
The majority of those who are brought to the dis
pensary by the diseases which they seek to have
relieved by coming, hear for the first time the voice
of God saying, " Repent, and believe the gospel,"
"Repent, and be converted." It is often in
the dispensary or the hospital that they hear for
the first time the fact that there is a gospel, a sal
vation, and a Saviour. It is there that they learn, as
never before, that repentance in order to salvation is
necessary. It is there they hear that " God so loved
the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but
have eternal life " (John 3:16).
In the light of experience in Christian lands with an
inherited Christian environment, — where moral influ
ence and national sentiment are on the side of gospel
obedience, and where, though hearing the gospel pro
claimed scores and hundreds of times, multitudes still
reject it, — it is scarcely to be wondered at that among
heathen nations, where national and family sentiment,
the influence of pagan systems, satanic idolatry, and
grossest superstition are all rigidly opposed to Christ
ian thought and light, large numbers of people upon
a single or manifold presentation of the gospel do
not publicly accept its teaching, even when accom-

54 The Medical Mission.
panied by bodily blessing. "Many are called, but
few are chosen" (Matt. 22 : 14). It is ours to do
faithfully the calling ; God alone can do the choosing ;
and in this respect the hospital and dispensary are
abundantly fruitful as they accomplish the fulfillment
of Christ's command to " witness among all nations."
But supposing medical missions were actually
devoid of real spiritual results, the example, teaching,
and spirit of Jesus himself would all impel us to acts
of mercy made necessary by the tremendous physical
needs of peoples among whom missionary work is pre
sented. Medical missions, however, are by no means
wanting in actual spiritual results. Patients are
frequently converted and baptized as the result of
hearing the gospel in the dispensary, or of residence
in the hospital. Many go back to their homes, often
many miles distant, and carry with them the glad news
of salvation which they themselves have received, and
often ere they accept it themselves they tell it to others.
The physician in charge of the hospital in the
London Mission at Amoy, China, reports that hundreds
of villages are yearly represented by the patients. Jis
the result of the conversion of one man, a hospital
patient, seven Christian congregations were formed.
The English Presbyterians at Swatow some years ago
reported that of their twenty country stations then in
existence, seven or eight had their origin in hospital
patients who had been converted while receiving
treatment.

Spiritual Fruit. er
Dr. Mackay of Formosa reports that from the visit
of one man to the hospital four congregations of
Christians, with a membership of three hundred and
fifty and double that number of adherents, were
established. Between three and four hundred different villages,
many of them fifty to one hundred miles and more
distant, are annually represented by the patients who
come for treatment to the writer's hospital at Miraj,
Western India. They all alike hear the gospel and
carry back gospel tracts and gospel portions to their
village homes. Our tracts given to the patients have
gone to scores of villages seldom, if ever, visited by a
missionary or native Christian. There are Christian
churches and schools in almost every land where
medical missions have been prosecuted, the establish-
menf of which is either directly or indirectly traceable
EoThtTwork of healing . the-sick by missionaries.
Said Dr. Peter Parker of Canton, China : " I have
no hesitation in expressing it as my solemn conviction
that as yet no medium of contact and of bringing the
people under the sound of the gospel and within the
influence of other means of grace can compare with
the facilities afforded by medical missionary opera
tions." It is not the sick alone who are benefited by the
medical mission. It is quite common for patients to
attend the dispensary or reside in the hospital in
company with one or more attending friends. These

56 The Medical Mission.
persons are also brought under the influence of
Christian teaching and they, too, are additionally
influenced by the object lesson which the Christian
treatment of their friend exhibits.
Among the millions of ignorant and degraded
heathen and Mohammedan inhabitants of eastern
lands who not only have never been taught the sinful
ness of sin and the need of divine forgiveness through
the atonement of a Saviour, but who for many cen
turies have taken continual pleasure in their deeds of
darkness while they make God himself responsible for
their wickedness, the missionary finds the task of
expounding abstract Christianity a most difficult one.
But by following the footsteps of Him who continually
went about doing good, he can commend the gospel
of mercy by deeds of mercy ; he is able not only to
make clear his teaching, but he can win entrance to
hearts otherwise hermetically sealed against himself
and his teaching.
In India, and similarly elsewhere, with the grossest
idolatry everywhere rampant, the average ignorant
and degraded heathen knows little of God, save as he
is illustrated in the piece of clay, wood, or metal
which represents God's supposed incarnation. To a
people so intensely ignorant and depraved it is the
concrete, tangible and practical Christianity that
appeals to them most strongly and teaches them most
effectively. It is the common experience of all mis
sionaries to meet people who regard themselves so

Spiritual Fruit. 57
ignorant as to be incapable of understanding the
simplest Christian truth ; yet such persons will seldom
fail to learn the object lesson which the caring for
the sick itself imparts. In other words, they can
apprehend by the sense of vision what they are
unable to take in by the sense of hearing. Persons
having no personal interest in mission hospitals see in
the work itself proof of the divine character of
Christianity, and are thereby drawn to the Christian
services. Indeed, there are few forms of mission
work that are not directly benefited by the organiza
tion of a medical mission. Thus it is that the medi
cal mission everywhere stands for the spiritual blessing
as well as for the physical good of the people for
whose sake it is conducted.
Of course, it is in the hospital where the Christian
instruction given can be graded and systematized that
the spiritual fruits of mission work are most apparent
and enduring. The greatest utility of the out-door
dispensary is the means it furnishes of reaching the
largest number of persons. But either in hospital or
dispensary, who can estimate the immense value of
the bread so widely cast upon the waters?

CHAPTER VIII.
VALUE TO MISSIONARIES.
Not least important in the ministry of physicians
is the place they fill in caring for the physical wants
of sick missionaries on the field. In the interior of
most foreign lands, the only medical aid available is
that rendered by the missionary doctor. Excepting
in the principal seaports of China, Africa and Turkey,
in the large cities and cantonment centers of India
and in a few corresponding places in other lands, the
only skilled physicians at hand are those possessed by
the missions themselves. It is a matter that calls for
gratitude to God that the lives of the missionaries —
the most valuable commodity of a mission — have fre
quently been saved, their health preserved and sickness
avoided, by the timely attendance and advice of the
resident missionary physician. It is a matter to be
regretted, that, not infrequently, devoted and earnest
missionaries eager to preach the gospel in new and
remote districts, have prematurely sacrificed their
life, or permanently injured their health for the cause,
when with a knowledge of medicine on their own part,
or the help of a competent physician, they might
58

Value to Missionaries. 59
have saved them to the greater good and enlarge
ment of the work that they sought to establish. Not
infrequently have missionaries been obliged to per
manently retire from the field, owing to acts of in
discretion and ignorance in the care of their own
body which the presence and advice of the medical
missionary might have prevented. The value of a
physician's presence in a mission is manifested most
during his temporary or prolonged absence from his
field of labor. Such absence, when not provided for
by a substitute, has often led to the crippling of both
workers and work. Missionaries, in these circum
stances, have frequently been obliged to cease work
and leave their fields, often permanently, and at great
expense, when the presence of a physician in the dis
trict might have prevented such a calamity.
Governments in organizing military expeditions are
careful to provide that competent medical officers are
commissioned to accompany them. The life of him
whose mission it is to save life, should be at least
equally valuable with his whose work may compel him
to take life. There is not a large tea plantation in
India that has not its own physician. Some of our
missionary societies would do well to imitate the ex
ample of both government and private corporations
prosecuting their work in foreign countries. It is not
that missionaries should be unwilling to go where there
are no resident physicians, but where medical attend
ance for the natives is also a necessity, the work for

60 The Medical Mission.
both people and missionaries can always be satisfac
torily and profitably combined. In some lands, as in
certain parts of Africa, if it were only to care for mis
sionaries, a sufficient number of medical men should
be appointed so as to place one within easy reach of
every worker.
Says one : " Imagine yourself a missionary at one of
our mission stations without a physician. A mother,
a missionary, in one such place in Western Asia, found
her two little children ill ; one died. She then took
the other and journeyed six days to the nearest doc
tor. ' Too late,' he said. She turned and journeyed
back. The second day that child also died, the rest of
the way she traveled with her dead child in her arms."
Christ sent forth his disciples in twos. Would not
that be a happy combination that would provide for a
medical missionary to accompany every clerical mis
sionary in every station, where outside medical aid is
not readily available ?

CHAPTER IX.
SUPPORT OF MEDICAL MISSIONS.
Can a medical missionary secure his personal sup
port on the field? Can the work of a medical mis
sionary be self-supporting, and if so, to what extent ?
These are questions often asked, but less often satis
factorily answered. This is owing primarily to the
different conditions existing in different fields, and
owing, secondly, to the diversity of method and prin
ciple observed by different missionaries and mission
ary societies. Obviously to reply to these questions
in detail would occupy more space than the purpose
of this book can allow. It will, therefore, be deemed
sufficient if what seems to be generally conceded by
those of largest experience and whose opportunities
for observation have been widest, is stated.
It is affirmed by some, who have never themselves
been on the field, that all a medical missionary re
quires in order to successful work and complete self-
support is missionary devotion, a medical education,
expenses to the field and financial provision while
studying the language. In controversion of this state
ment it may be confidently affirmed that, with the
61

62 The Medical Mission.
exception of those who may be supported in whole or
part by native governments in lieu of service rendered
to the State, there are few, if indeed any, who can be
said to receive their entire personal support independ
ent of either personal income or the allowance provided
for them by missionary societies or individuals at
home. In Mexico and South America where the
average income of the inhabitants approximates that
of our own country, personal self-support of the medi
cal missionary is apparently more feasible. But in
lands throughout the East, where the average wage
does not exceed a few cents a day per family, it is
clear that the people after defraying necessary living
expenses can have little left to pay even what a
Western physician would regard as the merest nominal
fee. If it were the rule to charge for medical con
sultation, a few cents a visit is the most that the
minority would be able to provide, while the vast ma
jority would be unable to pay anything. This fact in
itself is sufficient to emphasize the need of charitably
caring for the sick poor in heathen lands as we do in
our large cities at home.
There is, however, in all lands a varying percent
age of well-to-do persons who among their own people
are regarded as wealthy and who, when calling the
missionary physician to attend their sick, are com
petent to pay liberally for his service. From this
class the medical missionary may derive considerable
support, but of course even this will vary according

Support of Medical Missions. 63
to the number of such persons living in his distiict.
Yet among the wealthy, especially if they are officials,
it is not always desirable to demand a fee, since
prestige may be of greater value than money where
the general interests of the work as a whole are con
sidered. The writer received from the above class almost
the whole of the fees secured and needed for the
maintenance of this work. In most cases a definite
fee was asked according to the known or supposed
ability of the patient. With regard to high officials
the amount was left to their own generosity, and
they, knowing our custom of receiving fees from those
having ability to pay for service, in most cases re
sponded with more liberal sums than we ourselves
would have demanded. From others, again, nothing
was received, but their good will and patronage
were always considered of greater value than their
fee. Medical missionaries resident in the large interior
cities are more likely to receive the patronage of the
rich than those residing in the villages and small
towns, inasmuch as the majority of the wealthiest
classes reside in the larger places. But under the
most favorable of circumstances, complete personal
support, with the few exceptions already indicated,
has not hitherto been realized and for the obvious
reason that the number of those having ability to pay
a fee is but a fraction of the great multitudes of the

64 The Medical Mission.
poor and impecunious who will throng the medicai
missionary for treatment.
Assuming, however, that it were possible to secure
from the patronage of the richer classes the complete
self-support desired, this itself would, by reason of
the special attention such patients demand in waiting
upon them in their homes, largely defeat the main
object of the medical mission, which is to reach the
masses rather than the wealthy. Christ had compas
sion on and healed the multitudes, and to the multi
tudes we are sent. It is only as we reach the masses
through our hospitals and dispensaries that we can
accomplish the most in hastening the coming of his
kingdom. It is true that a limited number of physicians, es
tablishing themselves in large seaport towns in
Asiatic countries and limiting their practice to the
foreign population and wealthy natives, may secure
for themselves a living, but the character of their
patients and practice itself precludes the practicability
of anything but very limited missionary work. There
are, in many of the seaport cities, foreign physicians
with lucrative practices, but they are either govern
ment servants on salary, or ex-government officials
whose former practice under the government had
secured for them their professional reputation and
patients ; or perchance there are a few such physi
cians in foreign settlements who are and have always
been independent of government or other organiza-

Support of Medical Missions. 65
tions. It cannot, however, be said that any of these
classes of medical practitioners are in any sense mis
sionary physicians, though some among them are
doubtless earnest Christian men.
The medical missionary is as really a missionary as
any other worker on the field, and as such he is a
laborer worthy of his hire. His society should so
provide for his personal support as to allow him to
give his undivided attention to his work as a mission
ary as well as a physician. Fees received by him for
his services should revert to the home society or with
its sanction go toward the maintenance of the work
itself. To make a medical missionary depend upon
his fees for personal support would be to restrict his
usefulness ; and to grant him for personal use in addi
tion to a stated allowance from the home society the
fees that he might himself secure, would be to foster a
mercenary spirit, — a spirit that would be disastrous to
him as a missionary and, in addition, to the spiritual
interests of his work. The maxim, " First a mission
ary and secondly a physician," is one that in this con
nection should be remembered by the missionary
society as well as by the missionary physician himself.
The question, How far may the medical mission
ary's work be self-supporting ? is one to which a more
hopeful answer may be given than in the case of per
sonal support, for the reason that experience and
practice go to prove that self-support for the work is
much more possible than it is for the worker. But
*9

66 The Medical Mission.
with regard to this second query also, the answei
must necessarily vary according to country and dis
trict in which operations are conducted. In some
fields the work itself is entirely self-supporting, in
others mostly or partially so, and again in others it is
entirely dependent upon the home society. The fact
of greater or lesser support of the work will depend
in a large measure on the policy and peculiarity of
the medical missionary himself. There are those who
deprecate the desirability of making the medical
work self-supporting, while the majority, probably, be
lieve in at least an effort to make it measurably or
completely self-sustaining.
The great medical work conducted under the phy
sicians of the American Presbyterian Board in Can
ton, China, where annually between 35,000 and 40,000
patients are treated and hundreds of operations are
performed, has been for years sustained wholly by
gifts secured in the country. This is also true of
other work under the China Medical Association of
which the Canton work is a part.
In India in some districts in the English territories,
government grants in aid have been for years allowed
to mission hospitals, while others by the fees and
voluntary gifts of natives and English residents, or
from profits derived from sale of medicines, have
been largely or wholly self-supporting.
The large medical work under Dr. Chester of the
American (Congregational) Board at Dindigul, South

Support of Medical Missions. 67
India, where more than 20,000 patients are yearly
treated, has not, during more than a quarter of a
century, cost the home society a single cent.
The South Travancore Medical Mission of the Lon
don Missionary Society with medical work at fourteen
different centers, covering an area of 2,079 square
miles, and treating many thousand patients annually,
is largely supported from funds raised in the country.
The work of which the writer has been in charge in
Western India has been from year to year increasingly
self-supporting. There is a hospital with sixty beds,
and a large out-door department, where between
10,000 and 15,000 patients are annually treated. This
establishment is more than half self-sustaining from
the fees charged to, and given by patients. We receive
no state aid whatever.
In Siam and Laos through gifts from the king,
gifts from well-to-do patients and from sale of medi-
¦ cines, the medical missions, — the extensive medical
work conducted under the American Presbyterian
Board, — has been in a large measure self-supporting.
In Turkey, Asia Minor, Persia, Korea and other
lands, widespread medical work is carried on at a
comparatively small cost to the home societies. In
some instances, patients are allowed to provide for
themselves food and bedding or both. Native help
is comparatively cheap, and methods of conducting the
work are simple and inexpensive, so that for a given
sum a much larger number of patients can be success-

68 The Medical Mission.
fully treated than can be at home. In our own hos
pital fifty dollars will support an occupied bed for one
year. In Indian government hospitals the cost is
twice this amount, and in many of our American hos
pitals six times this sum is required.
The older the medical mission is, the better is the
prospect of making it. self-sustaining. Self-support of
the work is something to be aimed at and striven for,
since to provide free treatment to those who are at
least able to pay for medicines is to pauperize them
and make them dependent. Moreover, the medi
cines if paid for will be all the more appreciated, and
there is not the danger of their being wasted or
wrongly taken that there is when they are received
gratis. The actual self-support of medical missions already
acquired and the prospective support of such work
still to be established or yet in its incipiency are fea
tures which commend it to the hearty cooperation,
sympathy and aid of the Church and Christians every
where.

CHAPTER X.
QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE SERVICE.
The question of proper qualifications for medical
missionary work has been, in part at least, answered
in the foregoing chapters. But inasmuch as a large
number of letters received by the writer from students
and others with regard to the matter of training and
qualifications for the work indicate among many an
apparent lack of knowledge and a serious misappre
hension of the subject, a concise statement and one
harmonizing with the general requirements of the
missionary boards is here made.
At the outset, it may be well to state, though it
will to some appear superfluous, that no physician or
prospective physician, be he ever so successful as a
student or practitioner, who is not a professed and
conscientious believer in the Lord Jesus Christ as his
personal Saviour, should for a moment be considered
eligible for the work of a medical missionary. This
statement is made for the reason that men have
applied to our mission boards for the position when
their own greatest need was that which they would
by their very profession declare to others, namely,
saving faith in Jesus Christ.
69

70 The Medical Mission.
It may be further stated, that not all physicians or
medical students who are professing Christians, in
their present stage of Christian growth, would be con
sidered acceptable for medical missionary work. It
may also be said, that not all Christian students and
others who may already possess suitable spiritual qual
ifications would make successful medical missionaries.
Neither is it desirable or necessary that all mission
aries should be medical missionaries, since in some
lands, or districts in certain fields, educated physi
cians already labor and the government medical serv
ice is sufficient to provide for the physical needs of
the people. Districts thus supplied are comparatively
very small. In view of the immense general needs, it
would be a useful preparation as well as a wise pre
caution for every missionary entering interior districts,
unless he were definitely appointed beforehand, to
work in company with a medical missionary or in a
locality where medical help is permanently available,
to arm himself with a sufficient * knowledge of prac
tical medicine to be able to meet emergencies in his
own family and in those of his native associates. "A
little knowledge is a dangerous thing," especially if it
is very little, but to a missionary there is probably no
kind of legitimate knowledge that will not serve him
in good stead on the mission field. True, in some
cases missionaries have abused their slight knowledge
* Such study should be confined to elementary anatomy,
therapeutics, minor surgery and bandaging.

Qualifications for the Service. 71
of medicine by undertaking what they were not capa
ble of successfully performing and thus working harm
to the cause, yet the general good sense and judg
ment of missionaries has not in the aggregate percep
tibly permitted the misuse of their meager knowledge
of medicine. It should go without saying, however,
that no missionary without full medical training should
attempt to conduct regular dispensary or systematic
medical work of any kind. While it is a fact that by
ihe occasional dispensing of simple remedies for sim
ple diseases, clerical and women missionaries have been
able to do good and win for themselves a way to the
people whom they sought to spiritually reach, it re
mains for the fully qualified physician to conduct the
work of a medical mission.
The following resolutions, adopted by a conference
of the medical missionaries present at the Decennial
Missionary Conference in Bombay in January, 1893,
with regard to qualifications of medical missionaries,
state tersely the requirements which, in general, may
be considered suitable for all mission lands :
" We are of the opinion that every medical- mission
should be thoroughly equipped professionally, and to
this end we consider a hospital to be an absolute
necessity. " We also urge that men and women sent to India
as medical missionaries should invariably possess*
* With the exception of Turkey and some of the British
and other foreign provinces in certain parts of Africa and

72 The Medical Mission.
legal qualifications, and that none other should be
placed in charge of medical work."
To those who have already decided that they will,
" God permitting," go as missionaries, and have not
yet determined the question as to whether they shall
go as medical or clerical missionaries, and to those
who may not have decided the question of life work
in its relation to the foreign field, but are waiting for
light on their course, the following fourfold demands
of the work may be useful, as they may help to " think
through to a conclusion '' these very important con
siderations :
They are : First, good health ; Second, adapta
tion ; Third, professional efficiency ; Fom th, a conse
crated life.
First, good health. The medical missionary is one
who devotes his consecrated life and professional skill
to the double ministry of healing the sick and preaching
the gospel. Clearly his work is intense with heavy
responsibilities. Physically and mentally he is ever
subject to an exceptional strain. Add to this the
enervation of a foreign climate and the occasion for
South America, the laws in foreign mission fields do not
require physicians to pass state examinations in order to
practice. Indeed, in most of the Eastern mission fields
there are practically no laws governing the practice of medi
cine such as exist in Western countries. The people value,
however, most highly, physicians possessing medical degrees.
And among Europeans and Americans only those possessing
medical degrees are confidently relied upon.

Qualifications for the Service. 73
sound health is at once manifest. The student who
is able, at the present time, to endure the pressure of
a three or four years' medical course in addition to a
preliminary education without impairment of his gen
eral health or nervous system will promise well for
successful endurance on the foreign field. It is not
always necessary that a student possess an athletic
physique or robust appearance, but the work does call
for the power of endurance, a temperament neither
nervous nor phlegmatic, a disposition devoid of irrita
bility, but hopeful and courageous. An extraordinarily
healthy appearance, though desirable, is not always
demanded, but good staying qualities are indispensable.
It is not always those who apparently are best fitted
to withstand the strain of work and climate that
actually enjoy the best health. Indeed, the reverse
is often the case. A previous record of good health
under continued mental pressure and physical trial at
home augurs well for continued good health abroad,
and is probably the best guide in the decision as
regards bodily endurance abroad.
Second, adaptation. To the student yet in college
adaptation for medical work in addition to Christian
consecration is a matter to be considered prior to
entering the medical school, and in this, the natural
bent of his nature, his inherited talents and acquired
gifts will largely determine the decision to be made.
To the medical student or graduated physician the
fact of success and pleasure in Christian work at home

74 The Medical Mission.
gives the surest prospect of efficiency in medical mis
sionary work abroad. Of all missionaries, the medical
should be a versatile missionary. Natural ingenuity,
business ability, acquired skill, of whatever character,
can profitably be made to subserve his work as a
physician. If rare linguistic talent is not possessed,
stick-to-it-iveness will generally insure successful acqui
sition of a foreign language, which, in order to suc
cessful work as a physician as well as a missionary, is
indispensable. Third, professional efficiency. By this is not meant
professional celebrity. Interpreted in the present
instance it means a good all-round medical educa
tion, or, in other words, graduation from a medical
school of good standing where the course is not less
than three years of from six to eight months each.
The candidate should be able to pass any of our State
Board examinations, and preferably should actually
have done so before applying to the Mission Board.
A four-years' course is most desirable. In addition to
the regular medical course, hospital or post graduate
experience should be secured. In any case sufficient
experience to inspire personal confidence and insure
progressive efficiency on the field should be possessed.
General practitioners, rather than specialists, are
required. Particular attention should be paid to
tropical diseases during the general course, and their
special study undertaken after graduation.* Setting
•Broadly speaking, four classes of diseases are more preva-

Qualifications for the Service. 75
up private practice in order to secure post graduate
experience is generally unwise, since business compli
cations often lead to permanent anchorage at home.
Association with another physician, dispensary and
hospital work, preferably the latter always, is the best
means of gaining desired experience. At least a year
after graduation should be spent in this way. Medical
missions are not in need of quacks. Any kind of
practice of this land may be an improvement on that
of heathen lands, but for obvious reasons any kind of
practice is not suited for missionary purposes. The
missionary physician, as such, is generally alone, and
possessing only assistants relatively poorly qualified,
their advice he does not sufficiently value to follow ;
hence he is cast upon his own resources, as he is not
at home where a consultant is always easily avail
able. He is possibly a pioneer as a physician, and
though probably accompanied by other missionaries,
his work is to be established, built up and expanded
by dint of his own ability and labor. He will be
obliged to aid in, or by himself undertake, the training
of his own native assistants. Both for the good of the
mission work in general and for his personal reputa
tion on the success of his initial work much depends ;
particularly if it be operative work, he should have
had some experience. Moreover, the precious lives
lent in tropical countries than they are in America, viz: Dis
eases of the alimentary canal, fevers, skin diseases, eye
diseases.

76 The Medical Mission.
and health of missionaries are often solely dependent,
from a human standpoint, on the skill and good
judgment which he is supposed to possess. Questions
of sanitation and health-change for missionaries will
often be submitted for his advice or approval. Says
Dr. J. G. Kerr of Canton : " If then the work of the
medical missionary is to be a testimony to the charac
ter and benefits of a religion which comes from
heaven for the salvation of men, it devolves on him
to do the best possible work ; for in this way only
can he attain the best possible results."
Fourth, a consecrated life. Missionary service
should always be undertaken as a life service, " God
permitting." The medical missionary, like any other,
should go to the field prepared to devote his life (with
seasons of rest at home) to the work unless provi
dential intervention make its relinquishment a neces
sity. In his tour of the medical colleges the writer
found a number of students who expressed a willing
ness to enter the service for a time for the sake of the
wide professional experience likely to be gained, and
who manifested equal unwillingness to devote a life to
the work. Practically this was their position : Antici
pating difficulty on account of the already over
crowded profession, or because of their own inability
to secure a suitable practice at home, they would go
to the mission field at heavy expense to a mission
board, labor for a few years and, having acquired the
desired professional experience, return to America,

Qualifications for the Service. 77
and, through the means of their practical knowledge
abroad, make for themselves professional fame and
wealth and social position. Suffice it to say, the com
mendable scrutiny of candidates' credentials on the
part of mission boards prevents many such persons
from reaching the field under their care.
First, then, the medical missionary should be a
man possessed of an earnest desire to save souls.
Professional experience and the amelioration of suf
fering, however good and praiseworthy in themselves,
are not all that a true medical missionary seeks to
accomplish. To secure merely the physical good of
a patient is to lose the highest joy which the service
itself affords, and to fail in spiritual ministration is to
cut the nerve which itself tingles with the real blessed
ness of the service. To be able to open blind eyes,
to straighten crooked limbs, and to save human life,
is a work which for its own sake brings delightful
satisfaction ; but to save a sin-sick soul and to point
multitudes of diseased sinners to the Lamb of God is
a work which secures the most blessed compensation,
the most lasting joy. For, after all, the physician per
se is largely like a shoemaker who can only patch up
old shoes which are soon to be cast aside. Men's
bodies may be repaired by the doctor, but sooner or
later they go to dust. The work of leading a soul to
Christ involves eternal interests. It is a work that
never dies.
To the competent physician there is always the

78 The Medical Mission.
danger of becoming so engrossed in secular duties as
to neglect spiritual privileges. There is the danger
of becoming ambitious to develop a professional repu
tation at the expense of losing spiritual power. To
avoid this Christ must be in full possession, his grip
must be firm and permanent. There should be a
desire to do good unto all men for the love of -doing
it. He who can get down to the plane of the sick
and dying heathen and, while seeking to relieve his
bodily suffering forgets not to apply the gospel balm
to his sin-burdened heart, is the missionary most in
demand. The medical missionary is in a peculiar sense a
specialist, but he should ever remember that his
specialty is soul-saving. Though his time will be
mostly expended in performing professional duties, the
supreme and ultimate aim of his labors is to set forth
Christ as a Saviour. Zinzendorf's passion, " He, he
alone," should be his passion; and Henry Martyn's
motto "Burn out for God " his own. His medical
and surgical work cannot be too thoroughgoing and
he may even delight in his professional work, but he
should revel in the luxury of saving souls. Of Ansgar,
who lived in Corbie in the 9th century, it is said that
heathen and Christians alike attributed to him the
power of working miracles. He denied this power,
saying, " If I were thought worthy before my God of
that, I would beseech him to grant me this miracle
that by his grace he would make of me a holy man."

Qualifications for the Service. 79
Said Dr. David Livingstone : " I will place no value
on anything I have or may possess save in its relation
to the kingdom of Christ. If anything I have will
advance the interests of that kingdom, it shall be
given or kept, as by giving or keeping I can most
promote the glory of him to whom I owe all my hopes
for time and eternity." How fully Livingstone lived
up to this noble purpose and the effect of thus living
the testimony of Henry M. Stanley who found Livings
tone in 1871, makes clear. He says: "I went to
him as prejudiced as the biggest atheist. I was there
away from a worldly world. I saw this solitary old
man there and asked myself, Why on earth does he
stop here? For months after we met I found myself
listening to him and wondering at the old man carry
ing out everything that was said in the Bible. Little
by little his sympathy for others became contagious ;
mine was aroused. Seeing his piety, his gentleness,
his zeal, his earnestness and how quietly he went
about his business, I was converted by him, although
he had not tried to do it." Livingstone's life was
swayed by sympathy for the suffering while he strove
to imitate Christ. His was a spirit that every mis
sionary physician would do well to foster and
imitate. Second. If the life once consecrated is to be
enriched and developed, the first essential is the
personal, persistent, devotional study of God's word.
A complete theological education, while it may increase

80 The Medical Mission.
the usefulness of the medical missionary, is not in
most cases demanded. In these days of division of
labor the missionary will either as such be a successful
clerical or a successful medical missionary. He will
be either one or the other, though probably not suc
cessful as both. But few men have both strength and
ability to successfully prosecute the work of two dis
tinct professions. The medical missionary should,
however, possess a good general knowledge of the
English Scriptures. He should have learned to love
and faithfully study the Bible at home to an extent
that will insure the persistent continuation of the same
study after reaching the field. This is necessary,
primarily for his own growth in grace. It is in
dispensable if he is to lead his patients to Christ, that
he should have a clear and comprehensive knowledge
of the cardinal doctrines of Scripture. If not already
possessed, this knowledge may be secured in some
one of our Bible training schools, such as the Moody
Bible Institute in Chicago. It may be received con
jointly with the medical course, if such a course runs
over four years, or during vacations if the course be
three years, or at the termination of the medical
course, or during the time of post-graduate medical
work. The length of such a course will depend to some
extent on previous training at home, at college, or
elsewhere. His work on the field will be largely con
fined to the imparting of the simplest gospel truths,
since he deals chiefly with the most ignorant and

Qualifications for the Service. 81
illiterate. The medical missionary in most instances
has little time for profound theological study and
literary work, and the time at his disposal for religious
reading and development on the field should be
utilized in the study of that by which he can best
balance his own life, prepare for his patients a simple
but faithful message, and for his helpers uplifting
instruction. It is largely with his life that he is to commend the
gospel. He will have to teach more than preach.
His work on the field will bring him within personal
reach of souls and he should for this reason have had
experience of personal work for souls at home. The
power of oratory and rhetoric, while it has its place
with the clerical work, is not essential to the medical
missionary. Ability and experience in the study of
human nature and aptitude to meet its needs are for
him the most valuable requisites. " A Spirit-filled life,"
which is a "Word-filled " life, if possessed, will insure
all this.
Third. He should be a man of prayer. In seek
ing the highest welfare of his patient he should be
prepared to pray with him. He will often be called
upon to pray his patients into the kingdom, obstacles
out of the way of his work, buildings into existence
and courage into the hearts of his helpers. His con
stant subjection to trying responsiblity demands that
he know where to cast his burden. A dozen lives
may at once be dependent upon his skill. He is

82 The Medical Mission.
repeatedly called upon to perform operations which
at home are seldom undertaken except by specialists
and with all the collaterals of a well-regulated hospital,
trained medical assistants and nurses. If he be the
pioneer and medical missionary he will have to under
take operations with meager assistance and in the
most unfavorable surroundings. His skill and judg
ment will often be taxed to the utmost. In the
writer's experience his first major operations were
performed in a bathroom about six feet by ten, and the
patients, who had undergone amputation of the thigh,
of the leg, an abdominal section, several cataracts
and other operations, had their convalescence on the
mud floor of a native house. It is under such cir
cumstances that a man is driven to God for help, ft
has probably been the experience of most medical
missionaries, that cases often fearfully desperate have
recovered under the intelligent treatment and earnest
prayer of the physician, and blessing to the work, as
well as to the patient has always resulted. For these
reasons, then, the missionary should be able to faith
fully "practice the presence of God" as well as to
intelligently practice the art of his profession.
Christ never taught his disciples to preach well, but
he did teach them to pray well.
No amount of medical work should supplant the
"still hour" of prayer and Bible study. The time for
" aloneness " with God should at all costs be reserved.
" Time spent in prayer is saved in blessing. Time

Qualifications for the Service. 83
saved from prayer will be lost in power." John Eliot
said : " Prayer and pains through faith in Christ will
accomplish anything." Nesima said : " Let us ad
vance on our knees."

CHAPTER XI.
APPEAL TO CHRISTIAN STUDENTS.
To Christian medical students as yet undecided as
to where and how your life shall be planted in order
that it may bear the most fruit, — to you is this frater
nal message written.
On the ground of your professed love for and loyalty
to, Christ, in his name and for his sake I appeal to you.
In view of the world's great needs and the possibilities
of your own life in helping to meet them, and in view
of the relative opportunities at home and abroad, I
plead for your earnest, honest and faithful considera
tion of this momentous question — this question of
your life work, the question of casting the power and
influence of your " one short life " where it will count
most for God, where it will count most for humanity.
First of all, 1 ask you to consider the standpoint of
the example set by the Great Physician himself. From
the standpoint of the life of him whose you are and
whom you profess to serve, I submit that it is more
Christlike to go forth and minister to the greatest
needs of the greatest number than it is to stay at home
and be spent in meeting the wants of the compara
tively few. I ask, first of all, that you consider this
84

Appeal to Christian Students 85
great question from the standpoint of imitating
Christ — the standpoint of accomplishing the most in
alleviating the distresses and sorrows of this disease-
smitten and sin-stricken world. Side by side with the
saving, satisfying life of Jesus, and face to face with
the world's needs, — the already overwhelming spiritual,
the unutterable and ever increasing physical needs of
the still neglected majority of our race, — alone before
God is it not your duty, your supreme duty, to place
yourself, body, soul and spirit, and then honestly and
frankly prove to your heart and conscience why, in
obedience to Christ's command to " go heal " in his
name, and " witness "for his sake, you should not
surrender yourself to him for this service of greatest
urgency in the regions beyond?
It is fraternally acknowledged that he is not the
greatest physician who makes the greatest name or
secures the largest wealth in the practice of his pro
fession, but he who, content with necessary comforts
for himself, seeks to carry to the largest number of
physical sufferers, the largest number of physical
blessings. Even on the basis of this admission the
presumption is on the side of the foreign field. But
add to this the spiritual possibilities of your life and
there is yet a more urgent reason why you should
devote your life to the blessed ministry of healing the
sick and preaching the gospel among those who still
sit " in the darkness and in the region and shadow of
death."

86 The Medical Mission.
You are, perhaps, ambitious. You will do w-eiL to
consider Paul's two great ambitions. First : He was
ambitious not to preach the gospel where Christ had
already been named (see Rom. 15 : 20 margin).
Second : He was ambitious to be " well pleasing unto
him" (2 Cor. 5: 9 margin). Should not the end
of Paul's living constitute the aim of your life ? How
better can you be "pleasing unto him " than by plac
ing your life where it helps most in obedience to his
last injunction, in preaching the gospel to every crea
ture. Possibly on the ground of inadequate spiritual
fitness you regard yourself ineligible. But is this lack
not due to your own neglect ? What you have not,
you may and ought to have. No one has a monopoly
of God's gifts and graces. If the evangelistic student
can set himself to secure a medical education in order
to enhance his usefulness as a missionary, you as a
medical student or physician have the same oppor
tunity to enrich yourself as a Christian for the same
work. Let your convictions go " heart deep " in this
matter. Make it your purpose to know the mind of
God, and he will lead you to a safe conclusion as to
your future. After all, your chief concern is to know
him. Make him King in your life and he will supply
your lack of fitness. God is able to make you abound
in himself, and he will do for you in the matter of fit
ness more than you can ask or think if you will but
surrender yourself fully to him.
Perhaps you lack courage. The possible vicissi-

Appeal to Christian Students. 87
tudes of life in a foreign country are a menace to you
in this duty of decision. You have heard of riots in
China, of atrocities in Turkey, of cannibalism in Africa,
and your heart fails within you as you think of leaving
home and friends to enter life in a foreign land. But,
says Christ : " He that taketh not his cross, and fol-
loweth after me, is not worthy of me." " He that
findeth his life shall lose it : and he that loseth his
life for my sake shall find it " (Matt. 10 : 38, 39) . If
man can go everywhere for gold, surely you should be
willing to go anywhere for God. If for the sake
of science eleven leaders of seventeen expeditions
sent out in forty years to ascertain the sources of the
Niger river, could lay down their lives, surely there
should be a willingness on your part to lay down
something for Christ's sake and the gospel's. You
read and readily appropriate John 3 : 1 6 — " God so
loved the world — he so loved me — that he gave his
only begotten Son ; " but you fail to acknowledge 1 John
3: 16 — "Because he laid down his life for us, we
ought also to lay down our lives for the brethren."
But granting your fears of life in a foreign country,
they are probably ill-founded and certainly overdrawn.
News of a riot in China or a death in Africa startles you,
but you forget the thousands of missionaries (now
over 10,000 in all) who labor not only unmolested,
but who are welcomed and aided by the communities
for whom they labor. In the society having the
largest number of missionaries under its care in China,,

88 The Medical Mission.
The China Inland Mission, whose present number
is 630, not a single worker for more than thirty
years has lost his life by violence, and last year in this
same society the mortality from disease was only one
and one half per cent. The danger to life in an
American city with its modern trolley cars, live wires,
steamboats, railways, elevators, bicycles by day,
thieves, thugs and cut-throats by night, is as a matter
of fact greater than that to which missionaries are
subject in almost any foreign country. For my own
part I regard my life infinitely safer from violence in
India than I would in almost any of our American
cities, though the risk from the climate itself may be
greater than at home. But though calamity should
overtake you — this is also possible at home — should
you not be willing to make the sacrifice for God and
for your fellow-men?
To every true and loyal subject of King Jesus there
is but one sphere of service and that is the world.
There is but one question of service and that is,
"Lord what wilt thou have me to do?" There is
but one object of service and that is the glory of our
Lord and Master. " The field is the world and the
world is the field " as much for the doctor of medi
cine as it is for the preacher of the gospel, but if you
are to glorify him most whose you are and obey him
best whom you serve is not the presumption in favor
of the field which calls most loudly for your help?
Second. Your services as a physician are most

Appeal to Christian Students. 89
needed on the foreign field. At home in America
there is a physician within a stone's throw almost of
every house. There is a doctor in every 625 of the
population, while in foreign lands there is but one in
every 2,500,000. At home, for every 2,500,000 of
the population there are 4,000 physicians. In foreign
mission fields there is but one to the same number.
In other words, the supply of physicians at home is
just 4,000 times as great as that abroad. Greater
New York has more competent physicians and helpers
than the combined medical 'forces among 800,000,000
of heathen and Mohammedans. America has two
and a half times as many physicians for the population
as Great Britain, where it is improbable that any one
suffers for want of available medical aid ; yet on the
basis of England's supply, India could fill the hands
of 190,000 physicians, China and her dependencies
could employ 260,000 more. These two countries
combined demand an army of 450,000 educated
physicians to provide medical aid for their teeming
multitudes, but Chicago can boast of more physicians
and medical workers than these two entire countries
possess. And what of Africa, where 100,000 physi
cians would scarcely be able to cope with indigenous
diseases not to speak of the untold suffering resulting
from slavery, debauchery, and rapine? Then, too,
there is Siam and other Indo-Chinese countries, Persia,
Arabia, Turkey which, together at the lowest
estimate, would furnish work for 100,000 more. Five

90 The Medical Mission.
thousand physicians are annually graduated from
American medical schools. In view of this fact is
any one likely to suffer for lack of medical help if you
go as a medical missionary? Surely America is in a
position as no other country is to supply the needs of
these suffering millions.
Have you ever seriously considered the appalling
truth that one-half of our race are still destitute of
the commonest physical blessings, which we in West
ern lands for decades have enjoyed — blessings of
which they are bereft, but "which you in part have the
power to impart? Has it occurred to you that the
knowledge which God has given or is giving you may
be used of him in relieving the sufferings of tens of
thousands, while at home it will probably not benefit
more than a few hundreds? I pray you to remember,
that what God has given you, he has given you in
trust. What he has given to you, you owe to them.
" It is a debt from which you cannot escape save at
the sacrifice of the instincts of your humanity and the
promises of your religion." If you have no mercy on
the heathen while you are capable of helping them,
what right have you to expect that God will have
mercy upon you?
Said Ion Keith-Falconer, a missionary to Arabia :
" While vast continents are shrouded in utter dark
ness and hundreds of millions suffer the horrors of
heathenism and Islam, the burden of proof lies with
you to show that the circumstances in which God has

Appeal to Christian Students. 91
placed you were meant by him lo keep you out of
the foreign field." This is a Christlike maxim and
should be pondered on your knees.
Third. Going will secure to you the largest expe
rience in the practice of your profession and the
widest influence in the service of Christ. As a physician
you may develop yourself as you never can at home.
The writer has had more experience in a single month
in India than the average practitioner has in a year
and more than many have in five. The medical mis
sionary is constantly thrown upon his own resources
and must undertake difficult and important opera
tions. This develops his skill as nothing else can.
You may have the experience of many medical mis
sionaries whose privilege it is to treat thousands of
cases and perform hundreds of operations every year.
The experience of Dr. Hall, a surgeon in Allaha
bad, India, may in time be yours. Dr. Hall recently
visited a village twenty-six miles from an English sta
tion and twelve miles from the nearest railroad sta
tion. Remaining there six days he opened a dispen
sary under a large mango tree. During those six
days he saw 394 patients, performed 147 operations
upon the eye, sixty-nine of which were for cataract.
He returned home leaving a native assistant in charge
of the cases.
Medical missionaries in heathen lands are laying deep
and strong the foundations for the development of
medical science, foundations upon which are yet to be

92 The Medical Mission.
reared institutions similar to those in the West. T hey
are casting up a highway upon which multitudes of
our profession are yet to travel, and, traveling, shall
bless the world with their knowledge and skill.
But your influence for moral and spiritual ends is
undoubtedly greater than it is ever likely to be at
home. At home the physician is much on the same
level with his fellow-citizens as regards influence.
In foreign lands few are as highly esteemed and
few have greater moral influence. This fact, too,
should help you to a decision to go. You may
occupy by yourself a district covering hundreds
of square miles. Thousands of patients wait to
greet you, welcome your skill, and spread your fame
over a whole country. In 1891, a medical mission
ary in China treated fourteen thousand patients, rep
resenting eleven of the eighteen great provinces of
China. Your influence will make possible the resi
dence of, and secure the good will of the heathen for,
other missionaries, thus strengthening and fortifying
the work as a whole. Through you other work may
be tolerated, developed and expanded. You can en
ter houses where no one else can go ; you can reach
hearts barred fast against all others, your place is
unique, you alone can fill it. Dr. Asahel Grant, writ
ing of his work in- Persia said : " As I have witnessed
the relief of hitherto hopeless sufferers and seen their
grateful attempts to kiss my feet and my very shoes
at the door, both of which they would literally bathe

Appeal to Christian Students. 93
with tears, especially as I have seen the haughty
moolah stoop to kiss the border of the despised
Christian's garment, thanking God that I would not
refuse medicine to a Moslem, and others saying that
in every prayer they thank God for my coming, I have
felt that even before I could teach our religion I was
doing something to recommend it and break down
prejudices, and wished that more of my professional
brethren might share in the luxury of doing such work
for Christ."
Fourth. It will elevate and sanctify your practice
of medicine by making it participate in God's great
plan for the evangelization of the world. By amalga
mating the two noblest professions on earth — healing
and preaching — it makes them the peer of any one
profession. God has a great plan for this world
which, as we know, is its evangelization. The medi
cal mission has been greatly used of him already in
accomplishing this end. But oh ! how much there is
yet to be done ! The cry goes up from the little band
of workers now on the field : " Come over and help
us." The appeal is pathetic as it comes up to them
from groaning and burdened victims of disease and
sin all around and so is passed on to us. It is stren
uous as it comes from a handful of medical mission
aries, who are overwhelmed by the needs and oppor
tunities of their work — opportunities that have been
given largely in answer to the prayers of the people at
home who now fail to improve them. Shall not this

94 The Medical Mission.
cry from workers and patients burst open your dull
ears and thrill your cold hearts, causing you to go
forth and deliver these bruised captives, preach the
gospel to these neglected poor "at such a time as
this " ? Remember, that He who, after having healed
the multitude, said : " Pray ye therefore the Lord of
the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his
harvest " (Matt. 9:38), also said : " Lift up your eyes,
and look on the fields ; for they are white already to
harvest" (John 4 : 35). O lift up your eyes and
look, and as you look, forget not the Scripture, which
says : " If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn
unto death, and those that are ready to be slain ; . . .
doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it ? and
he that keepeth the soul, doth not he know it ? and shall
not he render to every man according to his works ? "
(Prov. 24 : n, r 2.)
Said a man of God : " Find out God's plan for you
in your generation and see that you cross it not."
Brother, have you done this? The will of God for
your life, whatever your own plans may be, is the
sweetest, sublimest, dearest thing you can know and
do. Are you finding it out? Paul in his letter to
the gentile Romans, writes : " I beseech you there
fore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to
God, which is your reasonable service. And be not
fashioned according to this world : but be ye trans
formed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may

Appeal to Christian Students. 95
prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect
will of God" (Rom. 12 : 1, 2).
If there is any student who should make the sacri-
fice (separation) of his body unto God it is he whose
work has to do with the body.
Paul declares if you would " understand what the
will of God is," and remember he commands this, you
must present yourself unto him, your life, your pow
ers, your talents. If you do this you will follow on tc
know God. He assures you that God's will cannot
be otherwise than good, acceptable, perfect. To
the Ephesians he writes : " Proving what is accept
able unto the Lord" (see Eph. 5: 10, 17); to
the Colossians : " That ye may stand perfect and
complete in all the will of God " (Col. 4 : 12) ; to
the Hebrews : " Having done the will of God ye might
receive the promises " (Heb. 10 : 36). And John in
his Epistle writes : " He that doeth the will of God
abideth forever" (1 John 2 : 17). Jesus said: "My
meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and tc fin
ish his work " (John 4 : 34). "I came. . . not to do
mine own will, but the will of him that sent me "
(John 6 : 38). If you will make the acceptable sac
rifice of your life, he will reveal the good and accept
able knowledge of his perfect will for you, whether
that be to go or stay.
Brothers, are you living for self and self-aggrandize
ment? Has not God given your life for a nobler,
better purpose? It is perfectly possible to live most

96 The Medical Mission.
and best for God at home, but if God intends you to
go, you can never be really successful so long as you
fail in doing his will. Are you living " the self-cen
tered life " ? If so, I pray you come out of it and
into the ark of God's plan for your life, into "the
charmed circle of his will." This is your most
blessed privilege. It is his most urgent injunction.
Said David Brainerd : " This I saw ; when a soul
loves God with a supreme love, God's interests and
his become one. It is no matter, when, nor where,
nor how Cnrist shall send me, nor what trials he shall
exercise me with, if I may be prepared for his work
and will."
And may the God of peace make you perfect in
every good work to do his will, working in you that
which is well-pleasing in his sight ! May he, whose
it is to work in you his own good pleasure work out
of you his own purpose, to the end that God may be
glorified in your body and your spirit which are his 1

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