The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-07-30 00:00:00

MEDICAL MISSIONARIES

We gave, some time ago, some extracts from the report of
the English Medical Mission at Canton, in which our young
townsman, Mr. W. Lockhart, is labouring with so much suc-
cess and devotedness ; and we are glad to see from another
report, with which we have just been favoured, that the me-
dical missionaries of the United States are labouring amongst
the Chinese with equal success. The following- passages
from the latter report, which are from the pen of Dr. Parker,
will be read with much interest : .

"The Opthalmic Hospital at Canton was opened by the
Rev. P. Parker, M.D., October, 1835, and the General
Hospital at Macao, in July, 1838. Up to the 17th of June,
1840, these institutions had received upwards of 8000 patients,
embracing every variety of disease. It was after lung effort
that a place was found for a hospital ; and when at length a
suitable building was rented, and previous notice had been
given, the first day no patients ventured to come ; the second,
a solitary female, affected with glaucoma, came ; the third
day, half a dozen ; and soon they came in crowds. It is dif-
ficult to convey to a person who has not witnessed the scenes
of the hospital a just idea of them. He needs to be present on a
day for receiving new patients, and behold respectable women
and children assembling at the door the preceding evening,
and sitting all night in the streets, that they might be in
time to obtain an early ticket, so as to be treated the same
day. He need behold in the morning the long line of sedans
extending far in each direction ; see the mandarins, with
their attendant footmen, horsemen, and standard-bearers;
observe the dense mass in the room below—parents lifting
their children at arms' length above the crowd, lest they
should be suffocated or injured; stand by during the exami-
nation and giving out of tickets of admission to the hall
above, where they are registered and prescribed for, urgent
cases being admitted at once, while others are directed to
come in five or ten days, according to the ability to attend to
them ; upon that floor witness one or two hundred selected
from the hundreds below, (many being sent away, some, in-
deed, irremediable, but still more curable, and deserving at-
tention ;) officers of various rank, from the chief magistrate
to the criminal judge of the province, sitting at the table of
the physician, with scores of humbler fellow-citizens, seeking
the same gratuity at the foreigner's hand.
" Patients from all parts of the empire have availed them-
selves of the benefits of the hospital ; persons of all ranks,
military, naval, and civil officers, the Nanhaeheer, or district
magistrate, the custom-house officer, salt inspectors, pro-
vincial judges, provincial treasurer, a Tartar general, gover-
nors of provinces, commissioner Lin, and a member of the
imperial family.
' The most unequivocal expressions of gratitude have
been manifested both in words and in actions. The father,
whose child, a beautiful daughter, had a tumour of seven lbs
weight removed from her back, after she was discharged well
returned with a scroll with a poetical inscription to the phy-
sician to this effect :—'A grievous disease had entwined itself
around my little daughter ; I had gone in various directions
seeking for physicians of distinction, and had expended
much money upon them in vain ; when I heard of the foreign
physician in the provincial city, 1 took my daughter by the
hand, and repaired to his residence with the speed of a
courser. He received and treated my daughter, removing
the flaw from the gem, and now she is a perfect pearl again.'
Thoughit is more than five years since the operation, the
father retains the most lively gratitude, and returns from
year to year with renewed expressions of it. Similar grati-
tude has been manifested by the young lady from Nanking,
who was cured of a peculiar kind of excrescence growing
upon the centre of the corner of her left eye. In one instance,
a brother and sister, the one nineteen, snd the other twenty-
one, had cataracts, so that they had lived together for years
without seeing each other's face. They were accompanied
by their fond parents. When the operation was successfully
performed for both, they were then, in the presence of their
parents brought to see each other. The emotions of all were
such as the occasion was calculated to produce. The feelings
of Maze Yay, a Chinese officer still living, and who sends
yearly remembrances to the physician, are expressed in a
poem which may be found quoted in the Penny Magazine for
July, 1837. The Tartar general, who had cataracts, on leav-
ing the hospital, remarked that he had been an office-bearer
forty-one years ; had visited all the eighteen provinces of the
empire, ' but, (alluding to the operations of the hospital,)
never have I seen or heard of one who does such things be-
fore' ; and burst forth in the exclamation, Taetith Teen
shed to e ko jin' !—Superlative virtue ! the first man under
heaven ! &c., &c.—Times.