Su Jing is well known in the academic circle of mission studies in China for his knowledge of English missionary manuscripts. Evangelical activities were closely linked with missionary enterprises in medicine. Su’s latest book, Ten Essays on Western Medicine in China, is a selection of essays in Chinese, which mainly concerns the medical activities in China of the London Missionary Society (LMS), the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM), the American Presbyterian Church (PC) and Chinese assistants during the late Qing and early Republican periods.
Two essays go beyond missionary medical activities, covering ‘The East India Company and the Western Medicine to China’ and ‘William Wykeham Myers and the Earliest Western Medical Education in Taiwan’. Although missionaries and mission hospitals were the most significant players in the early history of western medicine in China, the medical activities of The East India Company and William Wykeham Myers cannot be neglected. The East India Company was the impetus behind the introduction of the Western Medicine to China before missionary medical activities (44) and Mayer’s achievement, as the British Customs doctor was unique in China’s history of western medicine where missionaries predominated (222). Hence, these two essays are complementary to an account of the medical activities of missionaries and highlight the importance of the latter within any kaleidoscopic overview of western medical activities in China.
The Ophthalmic Hospital at Canton established by Peter Parker, missionary of ABCFM, was the first mission hospital in China (46). The essay ‘Medicine and Evangelization-Peter Parker and Chinese in Singapore’ investigates the free medical service provided by Parker to Chinese people of different social strata in Singapore, which won him their recognition.
The essay ‘William Lockhart: The Founder of Lester Chinese Hospital in Shanghai’ is a biography of Lockhart, which outlines how Lockhart resolved to work as a medical missionary for LMS in China, founded Lester Chinese Hospital in Shanghai and the Charity Hospital in Beijing. Lockhart was more than just a founder of hospitals: he introduced vaccination to Shanghai, compiled The Medical Missionary in China: A Narrative of Twenty Years’ Experience, raised funds for the Charity Hospital and cured cholera patients in Beijing.
Lester Chinese Hospital was the first western hospital in Shanghai. The activities of another medical missionary of LMS, Cecil John Davenport, a long-serving director of the hospital, are explored in the essay ‘Cecil John Davenport and Lester Chinese Hospital’. This provides a detailed account of Davenport’s reforms by which he attempted to establish a self-support system in the hospital. Davenport asked the LMS Committee to send more medical missionaries together with nurses and consequently opened a nursing school affiliated to the hospital. He also raised funds and improved the infrastructure of the hospital. All these measures laid the foundation for the prominent Lester Chinese Hospital in modern Shanghai. Medical missionaries of the LMS in China laid great emphasis on introducing western medical knowledge to China. This topic is explored further in the essay ‘Benjamin Hobson and the Publication and Earlier Circulation of “Outlines of Anatomy and Physiology (Quanti Xinlun)”’. This relates how Hobson and his Chinese assistant collaborated in editing this compendium, which had wide circulation and popularity among the Chinese.
Medical activities of the PC were epitomised in the person of Mary West Niles. ‘Missionary Mary West Niles in Canton and the Light Giving School for Blind Girls, Canton’ narrates the life story of Niles as the first female medical missionary to practise the principle of ‘Women’s Work for Women’. It outlines Niles’ medical work in the Canton hospital, her evangelical, medical and translational work after her resignation from the hospital as well as her attempts to found and sustain the Light Giving School for Blind Girls in Canton.
Apart from missionaries, another theme fruitfully pursued by Su is the medical activities of the Chinese assistants who learnt western medicine and worked in mission hospitals. ‘Wong Fun’s Western Medicine Career and His Dilemma between Eastern and Western Cultures’ mainly tells the story of Wong who worked as a medical missionary for LMS after graduating from the University of Edinburgh. Wong was the first Chinese western medical doctor and the only Chinese person who worked alongside the medical missionaries (163). Su makes plain the missionaries’ reluctance to accept Wong as one of their colleagues. This essay gives a vivid account of Wong’s experiences in learning western medicine from the medical missionaries of LMS in Lester Chinese Hospital in Shanghai, of Wong’s medical activities to become the backbone of the hospital, and his plan for furthering western medical education in China. Chinese assistants to medical missionaries used to be the ‘invisible men’ in China’s history of western medicine. With the fragmentary archival materials that he came across in his study of missionary manuscripts, Su Jing provides brief biographies of five Chinese assistants in the last essay, ‘Chinese Assistants Learning Western Medicine’.
Based on manuscripts from The East India Company records in the British Library, the LMS Archives in SOAS, University of London, microfilms of ABCFM and PC records and archives in the Wellcome Library, Su’s historical narratives in the Ten Essays on Western Medicine are both persuasive and convincing. They reveal some new historical insights. For instance, we learn that Lester Chinese hospital in Shanghai started from a six-bed hospital with both outpatient and inpatient care (84). This corrects the standard narrative that the hospital developed from an outpatient clinic. Its readability and rich contents ensure that the collection will appeal to a wide range of readers. What is extremely attractive in the collection is Su’s humanistic approach. Medical missionaries are depicted as real human beings, and Su reveals the psychological struggles of the above-mentioned missionaries. On the one hand, Davenport’s kind personality and piety ensured his successful interactions with the Chinese (302). On the other hand, medical missionaries also suffered from conflicts between their personal well-being and institutional interests of their missionary societies. Most importantly, the book offers a broad and sympathetic view of the activities of medical missionaries in China. Chinese attitudes towards western medicine and their encounter with medical missionaries are also portrayed.
Few scholars in missionary studies in China can peruse the original missionary manuscripts. Ten Essays on Western Medicine in China is instructive in this respect for Chinese scholars and will inspire them to explore overseas missionary manuscripts. Nevertheless, as the ten essays in Su’s book are separate, and therefore lack coherence somewhat, the history of western medicine in China is still waiting to be explored further.
