Statements respecting hospitals in China, preceded by a letter to John Abercrombie / By Rev. Peter Parker...

  • Parker, Peter, 1804-1888.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Statements respecting hospitals in China, preceded by a letter to John Abercrombie / By Rev. Peter Parker... Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    6/36 (page 4)
    have seen the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, the Bishop of Durham, the Bishop of London, and the Princess Sophia; all speak in terms of highest commendation that the plan is most rational and scriptural, and the mode adopted by the Saviour, &c.; and several express their readiness to lay down their guineas to found scholarships for the education of Medical Missionaries to China. I had also the honour of an introduction to the Right Hon. Lord Bexley, so well known for his benevolence; and through the politeness of Dr. H. Holland, and the Hon. A. Stevenson, to his Royal Highness Duke of Sussex, Marquis of Lansdown, Sir G. T. Staunton, Bart., and the Lord Bishop of London. An opportunity was also afforded of becoming acquainted with the principal physicians and sur- geons of the metropolis,—Mr. Vincent, late President of R.C.S., Sir Benjamin Brodie, Sir James Clark, Dr. Chambers, Dr. Hodgkin, Dr. Stroud, Dr. J. Forbes, Mr. Benjamin Travesse, Mr. Guthrie, President R.C.S., Mr. Lawrence, Mr. C. Aston Key, Mr. Listen, and many others; and among them all not a dissenting opinion was expressed upon tho subject. Dr. Forbes, editor of Foreign and British Review, in the number for July, thus notices the subject:—In an early number of this Journal (vol. iv., p. 568,) we noticed the establishment of Medical Missions in China; and we are much gratified to learn that they have been most successful in their double capacity of providing for the tem- poral and spiritual wants of tho singular people on the borders of whose country they are planted. One of the most zealous and enlightened of these excellent Missionaries, the Rev. Peter Parker, M.D., of the United States, is now in England for the purpose of raising a permanent fund for the support of the Medical Missionary Society in China, for the maintenance of the hospitals already established, and for the founding of others at every accessible and eligible part of China. AVe earnestly commend the sacred cause in which Dr. Parker and his brethren are engaged, to the attention of all whose positions and means enable them to promote it. Independently of the richer fruits of their heroic labours, we look forward with confidence to great benefits which medicine may expect from them, in the observations of new forms of disease, and in the discovery of new therapeutic means in the natural productions of this vast and unknown country, and amid the mountains of pharmaceutic rubbish which have been accumulating in their traditionary and written records, from periods anterior to all accidental history. We shall even hope for no inconsiderable additions to our stock of oriental medicine, from the work which Dr. Parker is now preparing for the press, founded on his own observations in China. Tho Bishop of London, whose civilities to a stranger are duly appre- ciated, remarked that the plan is most scriptural, and has the sanc- tion of the Saviour himself, and the publishers of the gospel in the early ages of Christianity; and so far have we been convinced of the import- ance of the subject, that these scholarships have been founded in King's College for the education of Medical Missionaries. The Royal College of Surgeons has acceded to a proposition which originated with one of the members of that body, to educate, medically, these Chinese youth that shall be sent to England for that purpose. The London Missionary Society had already affixed the seal of its ap- probation, by sending to China, as Medical Missionaries, William Lockhart, Esq. of Liverpool, and student of Guy's Hospital, and Ben- jamin Hobson, of Wellford, a graduate of London University College.