India is the land which above all others cries out for lady medical missionaries; but other Eastern countries have also a claim. Wherever Islam has planted its iron heel, women are jealously guarded in harems, and it is very unusual for a man to be allowed entrance on any pretext. In China, also, women of superior class are hidden within the high walls that surround their houses. Those free to go out gain little but suffering from the barbarous attentions of native surgeons. In the East the knowledge which brings relief from pain is a power to overcome obstacles to Christianity that resist every other force.
The Church of England Zenana Missionary Society has sent out a qualified lady doctor to Foochow, and in 1894 the Church Missionary Society opened a hospital for women in Hangchow with one large and six smaller wards. One patient who was brought into this building—of which two views are given—suffering from diseased bones, has gone out to devote her recovered health and new knowledge to the service of God and her own countrywomen.
(Photo supplied by the Church Missionary Society.)
INTERIOR OF NEW WOMEN'S HOSPITAL, HANGCHOW
There is scarcely a mission hospital or dispensary that cannot tell of similar results of the double ministry to body and soul. Each year justifies the increased number of women with medical qualifications sent into the mission field. Some, like Mrs. Russell Watson, of the Baptist Mission at Chefu, are the wives of missionaries, others have been sent out by various missions, such as the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission, or by the women's branches (added during the close of the present century), to the more venerable societies.
Dr. Henry Martyn Clark, of Amritsar, once asked a friendly Hindu what department of foreign missions his people considered most dangerous.
"Why should I reveal our secrets to the enemy?" the Hindu responded. But he yielded to persuasion. "We do not very much fear your preaching," he said, "for we need not listen; nor your schools, for we need not send our children; nor your books, for we need not read them. But we do fear your women, for they are gaining our homes; and we very much fear your medical missions, for they are gaining our hearts. Hearts and homes gone, what shall we have left?"
What may be expected when medical and women's missions are combined? According to the friendly Hindu, the very citadels of idolatry and superstition might tremble at the advance of this double force to rescue the captives.
D. L. Woolmer.