This was almost as startling as the unbound feet! A Chinese woman physician was unknown and undreamed of. But this young father's faith in the possibilities of Chinese womanhood was not to be discouraged. The necessity of general education, preliminary to medical training, was explained, and Maiyü was put in charge of Miss Howe, then at the head of the Girls' Boarding School of the Methodist Mission. In this school she spent most of the next ten years of her life, studying in both Chinese and English, and fitting herself under Miss Howe's direction for her medical course.
In 1892, Maiyü and her friend, Ida Kahn, accompanied Miss Howe to America, there to receive the medical education for which they had long been preparing. If America held much that was new and interesting to them, it was no less true that they were something new and very interesting to America. "What makes these girls look so different from the other Chinese women who come here?" the Government official who examined their passports asked Miss Howe. "All the difference between a heathen and a Christian," was her prompt response.
That there were Chinese girls who could successfully pass the entrance examinations to the medical department of the University of Michigan, in arithmetic, algebra, rhetoric, general and United States history, physics, and Latin, was a revelation to the people of America, and their college career was watched with the greatest interest.
While in Ann Arbor, Maiyü took pity on the professors who found it so difficult to pronounce her Chinese name, and decided to use the English translation of it, Mary Stone, during her stay in America. Accordingly one morning when the professor started to call on her, she announced, "I have decided to change my name, professor." The burst of laughter with which the class greeted this simple statement was most bewildering to her; but after she had seen the joke she often declared that she was "one of the products of Christianity, an old maid," for, as she pointed out, an unmarried woman is practically unknown among non-Christians.
During her medical course Mary became more strongly impressed than ever before with the evils of foot-binding. Her mother's feet had, of course, been bound in childhood, and although Mrs. Stone had never bound the feet of any of her daughters, she had not unbandaged her own. For she said that if she also had unbound feet people would say: "Oh, yes, she must be from some out-of-the-way place where the women do not bind their feet, and so she does not know how to bind the feet of her daughters. That accounts for such gross neglect." On the other hand, she reasoned that if she herself had the aristocratic "golden lily" feet, it would be evident that her failure to bind her daughters' feet was due to principle. But while Mary was pursuing her medical studies she became convinced that the time had come when her mother ought to register a further protest against the harmful custom, by unbandaging her own feet, and wrote urging her to do so. Mrs. Stone readily agreed to this. Moreover, at the annual meeting of the Central China Mission in 1894, when a large mass-meeting was held for the discussion of foot-binding, she ascended the platform and in a clear voice, which made every word distinctly heard to the remotest corner of the large chapel hall, told why she had never before unbound her feet, and why she was now about to do so. Her husband was so in sympathy with her decision that later in the meeting he added a few words of approval of the course she had taken. The last shoes worn before the unbinding, and the first after it, were sent to Ann Arbor to the daughter who had so long been a living exponent of the doctrine of natural feet.
After four years at the University of Michigan, during which she and her friend, Dr. Ida Kahn, had won the respect and friendship of both faculty and students by their thorough work, Dr. Stone went to Chicago for the summer, in order to attend the clinical work in the hospitals there. It was at this time that she met Dr. I. N. Danforth of that city, who was ever afterward her staunch friend. He was about to leave for Europe, but found time before his departure to introduce Dr. Stone to many of the Chicago physicians and hospitals. He says: "She won the hearts of all with her charming ways, and got everything she wanted. When I took her to clinics she would often not be able to see at first, being such a little woman; but the first thing I knew she would be right down by the operating table. The doctors would always notice her, and seeing that she couldn't see would open up and let her down to the front." After what Dr. Danforth considered a thorough clinical training, including visits to practically all the good hospitals in Chicago, Dr. Stone sailed for China with Dr. Kahn, reaching there in the autumn of 1896.
II
THE DANFORTH MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
On their return to China, Dr. Stone and Dr. Kahn received a most enthusiastic welcome from the Chinese. It had been expected that it would be necessary for them to spend the first few months in overcoming prejudices and gradually building up confidence. But on the contrary, patients appeared the third day after their arrival, and kept coming in increasing numbers, until in December it became necessary to rent dispensary quarters and rebuild a Chinese house to serve as a hospital. Dr. Stone reported in July, 1897, that since October of the preceding year, she and Dr. Kahn had treated 2,352 dispensary patients, made 343 visits, and had thirteen patients in their little hospital, besides spending a month in Nanking visiting the hospitals there.