Yan, Yiwei (Author)
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
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/)
Chapter
Chamberlain, Andrew T.;
(2012)
Morbid Osteology: Evidence for Autopsies, Dissection and Surgical Training from the Newcastle Infirmary Burial Ground (1753--1845)
(/isis/citation/CBB001251801/)
Article
Fye, W. Bruce;
(2010)
Presidential Address: The Origins and Evolution of the Mayo Clinic from 1864 to 1939: A Minnesota Family Practice Becomes an International “Medical Mecca”
(/isis/citation/CBB001031520/)
Article
Hurren, Elizabeth T.;
(2012)
“Abnormalities and Deformities”: The Dissection and Interment of the Insane Poor, 1832--1929
(/isis/citation/CBB001232194/)
Article
Zerr, Sheila Rankin;
(2006)
Beyond the Bricks and Mortar: The Role of Residences in Opening Doors to Nursing Education and Practice
(/isis/citation/CBB000930216/)
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
Schlumbohm, Jürgen;
(2007)
The Practice of Practical Education: Male Students and Female Apprentices in the Lying-In Hospital of Göttingen University, 1792--1815
(/isis/citation/CBB000773968/)
Article
Dubois, Charles;
(2006)
L'activité du service de R. T. H. Laennec à l'hôpital Necker, puis à l'hôpital de La Charité, entre 1821 et 1826
(/isis/citation/CBB000931819/)
Article
Gautam Chandra;
(2022)
Medical profession and unemployment in colonial Madras (1835–1930)
(/isis/citation/CBB106867993/)
Article
Waddington, Keir;
(2002)
Mayhem and Medical Students: Image, Conduct, and Control in the Victorian and Edwardian London Teaching Hospital
(/isis/citation/CBB000200022/)
Chapter
Fowler, Louise;
Powers, Natasha;
(2012)
Patients, Anatomists and Resurrection Men: Archaeological Evidence for Anatomy Teaching at the London Hospital in the Early Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001251805/)
Article
Bovin, Gary;
Silver, John Russell;
Weiner, Marie-France;
(2012)
The Role of Edward Harrison's (1766--1838) Disciples, Thomas Engall, John and George Epps, Charles Hoyland, John Evans Riadore, John Robinson and John Baptiste De Serney in the Treatment of Spinal Deformity in the Victorian Medical World
(/isis/citation/CBB001200768/)
Thesis
Santoro, Lily A.;
(2011)
The Science of God's Creation: Popular Science and Christianity in the Early Republic
(/isis/citation/CBB001567279/)
Chapter
Smith, Mark;
(2010)
The Mountain and the Flower: The Power and Potential of Nature in the World of Victorian Evangelicalism
(/isis/citation/CBB001033047/)
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/)
Be the first to comment!