"With reference to the extent of medical education which our students should receive, I am of opinion that we should qualify them for becoming practitioners, equal in attainments, at least, to the Government sub-assistant surgeons.
"That we may get and retain the very best of the young men belonging to the respective missions of the Punjaub, it is necessary, we think, to hold out to them adequate inducements as to status and salary. Unless we do so, we are likely to get inferior men, and, it is probable, the whole scheme may thereby prove a failure. It is to be hoped, however, that the Punjaub Medical Missionary Society, especially, will look to this point.
"I am very happy to be able to inform this meeting, that already some progress has been made in collecting funds to defray the necessary expenses of this scheme in its embryo beginnings. Dr. Henderson, one of the Professors of the Lahore Medical College, undertook, at the commencement of last hot season, to collect as much money as would be sufficient for three scholarships of twelve rupees each a month, for one year. I have little doubt that, if suitable young men come forward, we shall soon find ourselves in the possession of funds, amply sufficient, to defray the increased expenditure. From the little I know of the Punjaub, I feel fully convinced, that our fellow-countrymen only require to have a really needful and feasible scheme presented to them, to elicit their generous liberality.
"Such, then, is a very brief and rough outline of the scheme I have to propose respecting medical missions in this province. And I trust, if it meet the approval of those now present, we shall soon see at Lahore, a little band of Christian young men, preparing themselves for this comparatively new and important sphere of Christian usefulness."
The scheme was very cordially approved by the members of the Conference, and of the P. M. M. Society, and Sir Donald M‛Leod also spoke warmly in its behalf.
"I have," he said, "carefully read the paper, drawn up by Dr. Elmslie, on the subject of training native Christian youths for the duties of medical missionaries; which paper was recently read by him at a Conference of the Church Missionary Society, held at Amritsar, as well as before a meeting of the Punjaub Medical Missionary Society.
"I have long been convinced, that medical missions are eminently suitable and appropriate in the present circumstances of India, and calculated, accordingly, to prove of the very greatest value and importance here; and as I have, on many occasions, recorded my opinion to this effect, I need not enlarge on it in this place.
"Holding, then, this opinion, I highly approve of Dr. Elmslie's proposal, which I think likely, if carried out, to enable us to extend medical missions much more rapidly and widely than we can hope to do in any other way, at the same time that it adds another most important and appropriate mode of employing and providing support for our native Christians, to the very few which have, as yet, suggested themselves; thus helping largely towards the solution of one of the most difficult problems we have to solve, in respect to the heterogeneous bodies of native Christians assembled, under the existing system, at our mission stations."
Dr. Elmslie wished the native Christians to be educated up to the standard of sub-assistant surgeon. "And I entirely agree with Dr. Elmslie," writes Sir Donald M‛Leod, "in considering this to be a very essential point."
The reader will observe that Dr. Elsmlie's paper altogether ignores the valuable services which, as matter of fact, have been rendered to the cause of medical missions, by "non-qualified" Christian natives in Madagascar, Travancore, Madras, and other places. It is a valuable document, notwithstanding, and will doubtless get due attention when the subject of the training of native medical evangelists, and native medical missionaries, receives the comprehensive and exhaustive treatment which its importance merits.