In its early and humbler days, the fame of this hospital reached far-away Khorassan. A lady of that country who was suffering terribly, caused herself to be carried the fifteen days' journey to Peshawur. Miss Mitcheson, who opened the first dispensary, and is now the head of the hospital, saw that her case was critical and required an operation of a far more serious kind than she had ever attempted, and begged her to allow the civil surgeon to see her.
"I would rather die," the patient answered. The combined forces of suffering, fear of death, and persuasion, were powerless to move her. The Englishwoman, of whose powers she had heard in her own country, might do what she liked with her, but no man should come near her. Happily Miss Mitcheson successfully accomplished what was necessary, and the Khorassan lady made a good recovery. When the time came for parting from her new friends, she promised to use in her own country the knowledge she had gained in Peshawur. She kept her word, as more visitors from Khorassan testified, and they said she had not forgotten the benefits she had received in the mission hospital.
(Photo supplied by the Church Missionary Society.)
BACK VIEW OF NEW WOMEN'S HOSPITAL, HANGCHOW.
During Miss Mitcheson's absence in England Dr. Charlotte Wheeler, who with her fellow-workers, in the illustration on p. 102, stands in the verandah of the old building, superintended the medical work. On Miss Mitcheson's return, Miss Wheeler opened a medical mission amongst the women in Quetta. This work extended rapidly on and beyond the frontier, so that in November, 1896, when it was a year old, eight different languages were spoken on the same day in the dispensary waiting room.
Institutions for training Christian girls of India as doctors or nurses have come into existence as the number of candidates has increased and the necessity has arisen. The North India School of Medicine has been established at Ludhiana with this object. Many of the mission hospitals also have training classes. St. Catherine's Hospital, Amritsar, under the superintendence of Miss Hewlett, who has had nineteen years' experience, has provided very valuable assistant medical missionaries for stations in the Punjab and Bengal. At the last census a hundred Christian women—counting missionaries, assistants, patients, nurses and students—were within its walls. An illustration shows the inmates mustering before going to church.
One student in St. Catherine's Hospital, who had gained a scholarship, gave promise of a brilliant career. Before the time of study in which she delighted was over, the lady superintendent became suspicious of what this young girl described as broken chilblains on her fingers. A doctor was called in, and confirmed her impression that it was leprosy. An Eastern girl knows, what in Europe is only faintly imagined, of the horrors of this loathsome disease. One cry of anguish only escaped her when she was told the verdict. Then she rose above the trial, and resigned herself cheerfully to the will of God. She was prepared to start the next day for the Leper Settlement near Calcutta without meeting her friends or fellow-students for a word of farewell.
"What comforts me," she said to the Clerical Secretary of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, who was in Amritsar at the time, "is that I may go as a missionary rather than as a patient."
She went to that place of death and banishment, to live out the rest of her days in ministry for others. In her case the days lingered into years, and the disease took a severe form, but her devotion and courage never failed. When death came to her as a friend, and her work was done, the memory of the "superior girl," who had lived among the afflicted people as a missionary rather than a patient, remained. Perhaps her fellowship in suffering gave her the final qualification to be a missionary to lepers.