CHAPTER XVIII
MEDICAL MISSIONS
After literature perhaps we should place medical missions as one of the most effective ways of placing before the Chinese the difference between our civilisations and of showing them the truth and beauty of Christianity. There are three or possibly four reasons why medical missions are a right and effective way of conducting the Christian propaganda. First, they are an object-lesson of the love which Christianity inculcates. In school teaching we find that the object-lesson is the most efficient and easiest way of getting the human mind to understand a quite new idea; medical missions are object-lessons of the essential character of Christian teaching. Chinese ethics are very distinct in limiting the duty of man to certain well-known relations. They are five in number: the relation of the sovereign and minister, of the husband and wife, of the father and son, of the elder and younger brother, and of friends. No Confucian recognises the universal brotherhood of man; that is solely a Christian doctrine. Thus Confucius reproves the man who wishes to offer sacrifices to some one else's forefathers; that appears to him to be as officious as the duty of offering sacrifices to his own ancestors is important; a man has no obligations to any one else but to those who stand to him in one of these five relations. Very different is the tone of the Apocrypha, which is not of very different date, and which puts burial of the dead among one of the first duties of man without specifying the necessity of any close relationship.
The action of missionaries in coming to China was therefore wholly misunderstood by the Chinese. They were regarded as merely the emissaries of foreign powers, sent to spy out the land. Considering the way in which the Roman Catholic missions did as a fact identify themselves with the foreign policy of France, one cannot altogether wonder that the Chinese attributed to their mission the selfish principles they themselves would have followed. The first purpose, therefore, served by medical missions is to demonstrate to the Chinese that Christianity has higher ideals than Confucianism.
Their second great object is one that must appeal to the heart of everybody who has been in China. It is impossible to work among the Chinese without being rendered miserable by the appalling amount of suffering and misery that exists at the present day. The poverty of England cannot be spoken of in the same breath nor can in any way be compared with the poverty of China. Deplorable as is the condition of many individuals in England, harsh as is the action of some of our casual wards, any one who has studied both will freely allow that the poor in England are rich compared to the poor in China. Among the vast crowd that wanders along the North Road to London, you will scarcely see one without boots; there is scarcely one who does not get a piece of bread to eat when he is hungry; there are none who are suffering from untended wounds or unalleviated sickness. The workhouse infirmary will always open its doors, however harsh the Guardians, to those who are absolutely ill. But in China, starvation is quite common. Missionaries tell you how at certain junctures they have travelled along a road, passing man after man lying at the point of death, and those who are sick have too often no resource but to wait with patience the pain and death they foresee as their fate. The missionary feels, as he preaches the doctrine of love, that he cannot consistently ignore these suffering multitudes.
The third reason why medical missions are maintained is because they are a means of approaching people who otherwise would not hear the Christian truth. The man who has successfully healed the body has some reasonable hope to expect that the patient will accept that medicine that he offers to cure the soul. So medical missions have been started in every place. We visited many excellent medical missions, from chilly Mukden to torrid Canton. There are many stories told how in the days when the Chinese would not listen to missionaries, the medical missionary obtained that hearing which was refused to his clerical brothers. I was told one medical missionary found that the moment that he was extracting teeth was the moment when he could best advance his teaching. I have never heard the story substantiated; unless the Chinese are very different from us, one would have thought that the teaching would have had a distinctly painful association. Perhaps he took as his thesis the extraction of sin from the character. His success was equalled by that non-medical missionary who had the advantage of having a set of false teeth; these he used to take out before the astonished coolies and replace them; then having attracted their attention by this manoeuvre, he took up his parable on the need for taking away their sins from them and for putting new life into them.
The Chinese coolie loves a jest, and once he is on the laugh he will, unlike his English brother, be much more inclined to attend to serious teaching. One of the missionaries who understands this trait of the Chinese best is Dr. Duncan Main of Hangchow, where we spent two most interesting days seeing his hospitals and work and visiting his patients.
There is no better testimony to his great work than his obvious popularity. Wherever he goes there are smiles and greetings. He explains as we walk who are the individuals who salute him. That great fat man who stands bowing and smiling is a merchant of some wealth; his wife has been in the hospital; she has been tended by Dr. Main and by his skill has been cured. That old woman who stands by him smiling is another ex-patient. That young man with an intellectual face and a dark robe is an old medical student, now a doctor himself with a large practice, and he has settled near Dr. Main's hospital. And so his work increases and grows and the good he does must live after him. He takes us into the out-patients' room; they are a motley crowd, with strappings and bandages on various parts of their persons. While they are sitting there a lay-reader expounds to them the elements of Christian teaching. What a contrast to their minds must be the plain forcible teaching and the simple effective remedies and medicines of the Christians to the incantations and nauseous compounds of their native doctors. There is a great doubt as to what is the nature of many of the Chinese drugs. They always prescribe a vast number, many of which are apparently innocuous in their effect; they always give them in large quantities, and do not in any way attempt to isolate and extract the active properties of the things they use. You see a man eating a large bowl of some nauseous compound and you are told he is taking Chinese medicine. You ask a captain what his cargo consists of, and he tells you that it is largely made up of Chinese medicine. Some of the medicine seems to be prescribed on the principle of our old herbals; that is, there is a fancied resemblance between the plant and the disease. Others seem to come from well-known remedies administered in various ways; ground-up deer's horns from the mountains of Siberia has probably much the same effect as chalk has in our pharmacopoeia. But there also seems to be some possibility that the Chinese doctors have certain useful remedies which are unknown to Western medicine.
There is a strange story told in Shanghai about a certain remedy for a horrible disease called "sprue." The story is well known to every resident in Shanghai, still it will bear repetition. A certain quack called "French Peter"—I do not know his proper name—habitually cured sprue. Cases which English doctors had absolutely failed to cure, and which threatened ruining a career or loss of life, he cured in a few weeks. He had two remedies—a white powder and a black draught. He himself was a most unattractive-looking man. My informant told me that his career was being threatened by this horrible disease, and that he was expecting to leave China in a week or two, when some one suggested that he should try "French Peter." When they met, "French Peter's" appearance was so unprepossessing that the sick man's courage nearly failed him. He had been for weeks on a milk diet, and the first thing that the man said to him was, "Look here, take these medicines and go and have a good beefsteak for luncheon." He decided to try them. He ate his beefsteak, he took the white powder and the black draught, and I think within three weeks was quite well. "French Peter" would never tell his secret or where he got his remedies; at least he used to give different accounts to different people. I believe he is now dead, but on talking the matter over with some Chinese friends they assured me that the remedies were well known to Chinese doctors, and that "French Peter" had got them from one of their compatriots.