Such a state of affairs not only ensures that the necessary fands are forthcoming to insure successful work, but renders the institution free from constant dependence on the Churches of the Home lands, which bear the continuous burden of educational and evangelical efforts.
'A most striking change, during the last half-century, has come over the attitude of the Chinese mind towards Western medical sciencoand missionary hospitals. The earliest efforts to assist poor Chinese were met by the peopl+ themselves with suspicion and timidity, whilst the literati and the "upper classes" confronted them with a frozen and supercilious contempt. It is trae that, when Dr. Parker opened his medical hospital in Canton in 1835, a few of the more enlightened gentry supported him, and Howqu the famous hong magnate, " readily fell in with it, and let a building for this purpose, and after the first year gave it rent free." But " the Hong merchants themselves seem to have a lurking suspicion that so purely benevolent an object, involving so much expense of time; UN
Labour and money, must have some Intent object, which it behaved them to watch. A linguist's clerk was often in attendance, partly for this purpose, for three or four years, and made himself very useful." Even within the last twenty-live years not seldom have obstacles been placed in the way of securing land for hospital erection, by those who were ignorantly or interestedly opposed to such institutions. But times have changed. Perhaps even more marked than the change of front towards hospitals and Western medical science is the almost universal desire on the part of intelligent young men to seek admission to medical schools, in order to prepare themselves for the medical profession. Throughout the maritime and riverine provinces over which the influence of the foreigner is most marked, native doctors, trained in part after the ways of the West, may be numbered by many" hundreds. On the other hand, _notwithstanding the enormous strides made by many of the Chinese in medical knowledge, and the fact that a Chinese doctor is available to millions of the people, when they seck him, the truth remains incontestable that the foreigner is facile princeps and this is the case in a marked degree where several years' residence in any locality has won him a reputation and has made his name a household word in tens of thousands of families. This fact may be cited as an additional argument in favour of the ideal of self-support as the next step in advance, by which medical missions in China would at once be placed upon a sound financial basis, and their promoters find themselves in possession of ample funds for all their requirements. It is possible that there will be some poor districts, where too stern on insistence on the application of the principle might be detrimental to the success of the object which all have at heart. These possible exceptions, however, will only serve to prove the rule that the general situation encourages medical men in China resolutely to adopt the principle of self-support for their hospitals.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.