Ons effect of the plague now rife in the North is likely to be a great impetus given to the study of medicine on the part of the Chinese. Students have been drafted from medical colleges to perform in Manchuria the work of fully qualified physicians, and while their zeal and self-sacrifice may be admired, it is impossible to congratulate the nation that has to resort to such unsatisfactory means of coping with a grave calamity. The thinking section of the population must realize that in the medical art, in spite of a few brilliant exceptions, the country is as far behind an ideal state of affairs as in other respects, and in view of the readiness with which foreign help has been enlisted to fight the That' there. will be engendered logue, it is reasonable to sup)
general desire to remove from the nation the reproach of ignorance in medical and sanitary matters. Foreign Medical Missions have been and still are the most fruitful training ground for Chinese medical men; bat it may well be open to doubt whether, in the event of a sudden and large increase in the! number of students applying for admission, the present resources of the Missions would suffice. The subject has recently been raised by our Canton correspondent, who, in view of the success that has attended the Fatshan Wesleyan Hospital and the Canton Medical Missionary Society's Hospital, urges the general adoption of the policy of self-support by all or at least the majority of Medical Missions. Tu the case of the Fatshan Hospital self-support has been the aim in view for twenty-five years. There was a natural opposition, especially among the Chinese workers, at first, when the step from "free healing" to "self-support" was taken, but this opposition never reached the stage of resentment it soon subsided into quiescence finally it was transformed into active support. Indeed, so obviously was the principle of " self-support" an advance beyond the old policy of " free healing" that, some years after, the young doctor in charge
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.