80th May. Wuernze missionary hospitals and dispensaries are regarded as means to an end, an attraction to Chinese to come in and be preached to, or as ends in themselves, there is no question about the amount of good they do. From the statistics made public the other day we learn that there are now in China, under the care of Protestant missionaries, 61 hospitals and 43 dispeusaries, while the total number of patients treated in 1889 was 348,439. This, of course, is only a drop in the bucket of the whole population of China, and its meagreness strikes us when we remember that in London alone the total attendance at the hospitals and dispensaries in a year amounts to about one million persons. But it is a drop in the bucket, and a drop will sometimes tinge the whole bucketful. The reports that we have noticed from time to time skew how men will come distances of fifty or a hundred miles or more from the interior to attend the foreign hospital, and every man who returns to his village with his sufferings alleviated or removed does something to lighten or remove the popular prejudice against foreigners. Thus the good the medical missionary does goes, like all good works, even farther than he thinks; and in contributing to the support of his hospital, we are indirectly benefiting ourselves as well as the poor Chinese for whom the work is primarily done." The quality of mercy is not strained; it him that gives and lim that takes."
Among all the reports that reach us there is none generally more interesting than that of the Church Missionary Society's Hangchow Medical Mission, a
received. Dr. Duncan Main, who is in charge of the hospital at Hangchow, takes the greatest interest in the work, and has very considerable funds at his disposal, the gross receipts in 1889 having been nearly seven thousand dollars. With such resources Dr. Main is able to relieve a great deal of suffering, and his records shew 458 in-patients admitted during 1889, 8,008 separate out-patients who made 22,814 visits and 91 suicides, of whom 13 were dead on arrival, 21 died, and 57 were restored to a world of which they had shown in the most incontrovertible manner that they were weary. In addition to all this work at the hospital nearly 3,000 patients were visited at their homes in Hangchow and the country.
We have no doubt that Dr. Main is as much devoted to the spiritual as the medical part of his work, but throughout the report the reader has a feeling that it is his professional work that absorbs the writer most, and that he has to pull himself together every now and then and remember that his hospital is supposed to be only a means to anend. In his opening paragraph he tells us " We endeavoured not to forget that the object of the mission is to bring the diseases of the soul into contact with the Great Physician that they may be healed. Christ went about doing good, preaching the Gospel and healing the sick, and always subordinating his healing power as regards physical diseases to the great end for which he laid down his life, the salvation of all men." In the waiting-room of the dispensary, whose walls are adorned with scripture pictures of Chinese art, "an evangelist and Bible-woman invite the patients to be seated, and then go in for button-hole theology, and ina plain, personal and practical way tell them of Jesus the Physician of Souls. The patients listen with respect and attention, some show great interest in the Gospel history, and many buy portions of the Scriptures, tracts, etc., etc." When it comes to the results of this spiritual care, they cannot be weighed and measured like the results of the medical care: "we cannot in a book like ours tabulate spiritual results like so many packages of goods, but we can say that Christ has been preached and souls have been saved, and although the number is not a large one it is sufficient to stimulate and encourage us." Io enable his readers to realise what the medical work of the hospital is, Dr. Main describes the occurrences of a day, and if the details in some cases are alittle more complete than seems suitable in a report intended for general perusal, and the same may be said of the notes of cases, they will no doubt help to persuade possible subscribers. Que whole page is devoted to a victim of opium who has smoked for 24 years, but who, after all, only spends 70 cash—or not much more than the price of a pint'—aday on the drug. His case leads Dr. Main to say a few words about that- dangerous and wide-spread j imposition, the sale of anti-opium pills, whose use is actually more injurious than that of the opium pipe, and which we were glad to see was formally condemned at the recent conference. Dr. Main is not too timid, for he tells us of one man who came from a place sevent} miles off, who had been entrusted wit! commissions to get medicine for ten jof his friends as well as himself, and was sent off with 12 bottles of medicine, two plasters and a box of pills. No doubt the operation of this wholesale doctoring was aided by faith in the remedies that had been sought from such a distance. In mentioning the case of a female leper who was taken in as an in-patient, Dr. Main mentions that a charge is made, varying from to $10 a month, to those who can afford to pay, a course of which the Chinese themselves approve. "They value the medicine and treatment much more when they have to pay a little for them. hose who are really ill and have nothing to pay are admitted free of charge." Dr. Mam naturally finds the indoor work much more satisfactory than the dispensary practice, because the patients can be watched and it can be secured that they follow the instructions given them. Ie outdoor patient will perhaps conden the whole bottle of medicine because the first dose does not make him feel better, or drain tata draught if it does; or he will take native medicine with that given him at the hospital, "with the idea that two halves make one whole." The doctor acknowledges with gratitude the presents in money and kind which have been sent in in abundance, and only laments that two of his last year's wants remained unsupplied, an artificial legend anew dispensary for the out-patient detment; and if any one of our readers has an unused artificial leg, hewilldowell to send it to the hospital at Hangchow. The notes of cases are, as we have already remarked, rather technical, but we must note the really wonderful cure of a young labourer who was brought in at death's door from abscess of the liver. By great care he was gradually restored, so that he became "quite free from pain and stout again. His feelings were so inexpressible that at this period he bolted out of hospital without saying a word of his intention."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.