Notable Women of Modern China

by Margaret E. Burton

It would not have been just cause for discouragement had the work dropped off the next year; for a dispute between some French Catholic priests and the Nanchang magistrates led to such serious disturbances and bloodshed that the missionaries were obliged to flee for their lives. Dr. Kahn refused to leave her work until the last possible moment, and returned just as soon as it was at all safe to do so. At the end of the year she was able to report that although it had been necessary to close the dispensary for three months, fully as many patients had been treated in the nine months as in the twelve months of the year previous. Another gift had also been received from the gentry, a piece of land near the hospital site, on which a home for the physician was already in process of building.

During 1907 the work continued to grow steadily in scope and favour. Dr. Kahn's annual report for that year shows something of its development: "My practice has increased steadily among the foreigners and Chinese, until now we have patients come to us from all the large interior cities, even to the borders of Fuhkien. You would be surprised to know how many foreigners I treat in this out-of-the-way place. During the year we have treated over eight thousand patients. The evangelistic work among them has been better undertaken than ever before, and I am sure we shall see results in the near future. Several inquirers have been accepted, and seven women have been taken in as probationers."

Although the demands of her work in Nanchang are constant and absorbing, Dr. Kahn has never become provincial in her interest; while working with whole-hearted devotion in her own corner, she still keeps the needs of the entire field in mind. At the fifth triennial meeting of the Educational Association of China, held in Shanghai in the spring of 1905, she gave an address on "Medical Education," in which she said in part:

"Turn the mind for a moment to the contemplation of China's four hundred millions, with the view of inaugurating effectual modern medical practice in their midst. How many physicians are there to minister to this vast mass of humanity? Barely two hundred! Such a ratio makes the clientele of each physician about two million. What would the English-speaking world think if there were only one physician available for the cities of New York and Brooklyn! Yet the people of these cities would not be so badly off, because of the steam and electrical connections at their command."

"We as missionary physicians recognize our own inadequacy and the imperative demand for native schools. How can we undertake to help spread medical education in China with the limited means at our command? Shall we simply take unto ourselves a few students as assistants, and after training them for a few years turn them out as doctors? By all means, no! Take us as we are generally situated, one or two workers in charge of a large hospital or dispensary, is not the stress of our professional work almost as much as we can bear? Then there are the people to whom we ought to give the bread of life as diligently as we minister to their bodily needs. Add to this the urgent need of keeping up a little study. Where comes the time and strength to teach the students as they should be taught? Certainly to the average missionary such work as the turning out of full-fledged doctors ought to be debarred. It seems to me that what can and ought to be done is to single out promising students who possess good Christian characters as well as physical and mental abilities, and send them to large centres such as Peking, Canton, Shanghai, and Hankow, where they might take a thorough course in medicine and surgery. In these large cities the case is altered; for hospitals and physicians are comparatively numerous, and much could be done in a union effort. I am glad one or two such schools have been inaugurated."

"As stiff a course as possible ought to be arranged and if it is thought best the whole thing might be outlined by the China Medical Missionary Association. For entrance requirements there should be presented a solid amount of Chinese and English, with some Latin and perhaps one other modern language. That may seem a great deal to ask at present, but our higher schools of learning ought soon to be able to supply such a demand, as well as the necessary training in mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc. In other words the student must be equipped in the very best manner for his lifework."

"During the present generation at least, if not longer, the women of China will continue to seek medical advice from women physicians, and to meet the demand we must confront and solve another problem. Co-education is impracticable just at this juncture. We must have either an annex to the men's college, or a separate one entirely. Whichever plan is adopted it matters not, barring the 'lest we forget' that it is just as important to establish medical schools for women as for men."

"In the golden future when schools abound we shall have to think of state examinations; but at that time we shall expect to be ready to greet the blaze of day in this wonderful country of ours, when she has wakened from the long sleep we often hear about, and taken her place among the nations of the world, and God and man shall see 'that it is good.'"

At the close of 1907 Dr. Kahn had been back in China for twelve years, years of arduous, almost unremitting labour; and her fellow missionaries felt that before the work on the new hospital building began she ought to have a vacation. Certainly she had earned it. Not only had she worked faithfully for seven years in Kiukiang, but she had, within the five succeeding years, established medical work in a large city, where she was the first and only physician trained in Western sciences. Assisted only by two nurses whom she herself had trained, she had kept her dispensary running the year around, all day and every day. Moreover, she had kept the work practically self-supporting, in spite of the fact that she had refused to economize by using inferior medicines, or bottles of rough glass which could not be thoroughly cleansed. She had insisted that her drugs be of the purest, and dispensed in clean, carefully labelled bottles, and had often furnished besides the food needed to build up strength. In addition to all this, she so commended herself and her work to the people of the city that in 1906 she was enabled to hand over to the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, a dispensary building and two fine building lots, to be used for a hospital and physician's home.

She was finally persuaded to go to America for a period of change and rest. "Rest" for Dr. Kahn evidently means a change of work; for she went at once to Northwestern University to take the literary course which she felt would fit her for broader usefulness among her countrywomen. Eager to get back to China she did three years' work in two, studying in the summer quarter at the University of Chicago, when Northwestern closed its doors for the vacation. In addition to her University studies, she undertook, for the sake of her loved country, a work which is peculiarly hard for her, and almost every Sunday found her at some church, telling of the present unprecedented opportunities in China.