Article ID: CBB001450034

Peter Parker's Medical Activities in Singapore and the Possible Motivation for the Establishment of Early Mission Hospitals (2013)

unapi

Yan, Yiwei (Author)


Chinese Journal for the History of Science and Technology
Volume: 34, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 159-172


Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: [Translated title.] In Chinese.
Language: Chinese

Peter Parker, the first medical missionary to be sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to China in 1834, began his attempts at propagating the Gospel by providing medical aid gratis to Chinese immigrants in Singapore. His journey to Singapore shortly after his initial arrival in Canton resulted for the most part from the political upheaval caused by the Napier Affair, rather than the often claimed reason that he went there to learn Chinese and practice medicine as part of an earlier plan. Further evidence of the abrupt nature of the trip was that the oral Chinese that Parker learned in Singapore was Fukien, a dialect spoken in the southern part of Fujian Province, China, which would be useless in his Canton work. Once in Singapore, Parker found he was needed more on medical than spiritual grounds. After a while he opened a dispensary with the help of other missionaries in a region of the port city where immigrants from southern Fujian predominated. The dispensary was warmly welcomed, providing medical aid to more than a thousand poor Chinese patients in the first 11 months of its operation, during the course of which more than 50 diseases were treated. It later served as a model for Parker's Ophthalmic Hospital in Canton. These medical activities did not originate from a pre-existing strategy of the ABCFM, but were, in fact, occasioned by the local situation. Although successful, this medical institution failed to earn support from the mission board at home either in the form of funds or personnel, and was discontinued after Parker and another physician in attendance had both left, leaving only sparse records in local documents. When Parker was in Singapore, the demand for medical facilities in society at large was strikingly urgent, the two existing hospitals clearly insufficient to meet the needs of the large number of impoverished immigrants. Yet this wide-open field for medical activities did not persuade any of the protestant missions then active in that area, including ABCFM, to establish a mission hospital there. The absence of mission hospitals in Singapore is still noticeable today. Observation of Parker's Singapore journey leads us to presume that the demands of society for medicine may hardly have been the main motivation for any protestant mission to set up hospitals, if it was a motivation at all.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001450034/

Similar Citations

Article Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi; (2022)
Medical Missionaries and the Invention of the “Serai Hospital” in North-western British India (/isis/citation/CBB500519781/)

Article Yan, Yiwei; Zhang, Daqing; (2008)
Eye Cases and Their Therapies at Early Missionary Hospitals in China, 1835--1876 (/isis/citation/CBB000933523/)

Article Samson, Jane; (2013)
Scurvy Martyrdom: Allen Gardiner and the Patagonian Mission (/isis/citation/CBB001200830/)

Book Good, Charles M.; (2004)
The Steamer Parish: The Rise and Fall of Missionary Medicine on an African Frontier (/isis/citation/CBB001035785/)

Article Hurren, Elizabeth T.; (2012)
“Abnormalities and Deformities”: The Dissection and Interment of the Insane Poor, 1832--1929 (/isis/citation/CBB001232194/)

Article Shane Doyle; Felix Meier zu Selhausen; Jacob Weisdorf; (2020)
The Blessings of Medicine? Patient Characteristics and Health Outcomes in a Ugandan Mission Hospital, 1908–1970 (/isis/citation/CBB251207238/)

Book Heaman, Elsbeth; (2003)
St. Mary's: The History of a London Teaching Hospital (/isis/citation/CBB000771234/)

Article Gautam Chandra; (2022)
Medical profession and unemployment in colonial Madras (1835–1930) (/isis/citation/CBB106867993/)

Thesis Santoro, Lily A.; (2011)
The Science of God's Creation: Popular Science and Christianity in the Early Republic (/isis/citation/CBB001567279/)

Article Fleck, Eliane Cristina Deckmann; (2004)
A morte no centro da vida: reflexões sobre a cura e a não-cura nas reduções jesuítico-guaranis (1609--75) (/isis/citation/CBB000640163/)

Thesis McCoy, William Kent, Jr.; (2015)
Healing the Leper? Mission Christianity, Medicine, and Social Dependence in 20th Century Swaziland (/isis/citation/CBB069674165/)

Authors & Contributors
Selhausen, Felix Meier zu
Weisdorf, Jacob
Diana S. Wylie
Honarmand Ebrahimi, Sara
Chandra, Gautam
McCoy, William Kent, Jr.
Concepts
Medicine
Hospitals and clinics
Medical education and teaching
Missionaries and missions
Christianity
Anatomy
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century, early
20th century
21st century
17th century
Places
London (England)
Great Britain
United States
India
Africa
Paraguay
Institutions
Mayo Clinic
University of Toronto
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
Universität Göttingen
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment