BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

Hopkins served as the model for medical education in the United States, and in turn PUMC
became the model, with modifications, for medical schools in China.
Improving public health had been one of the key goals of PUMC since its inception. Of
the first four divisions of the school – communicable diseases, general sanitation, vital statistics,
and medical services – three were related to public health. The school quickly grew to include
other specialized fields (medicine, including pediatrics, dermatology and syphilology, and
neurology; surgery; OB/GYN; roentgenology [radiology]; urology; anesthetics; orthopedics; and
ophthalmology), as well as the Training School for Nurses. The nursing school opened in 1920
with three students and placed its emphasis on nursing education, rather than just supplying
hospitals with nursing services. In 1924, as part of its legitimizing and professionalizing efforts
to be incorporated into the university, the training school changed its name to the School of
Nursing, and the leader of the school gained the title of dean. Half of the 39 students the school
had graduated by 1932 were working in midwifery or public health. 303
The seed of modern maternal and child health in China was developed by Dr. John B.
Grant, a member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Division and chairman of
PUMC’s Department of Public Health, and Marion Yang, a PUMC graduate. Grant was born in
Ningbo, China, to medical missionary parents, and then educated at the medical schools of the
University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins. In China, Grant focused on improving school
hygiene and establishing community health centers like the Health Demonstration Station in
Beijing. According to Bowers, the Station “created a generation of public health nurses whose
services to their country were comparable to those of the PUMC medical graduates who entered
303 Bowers, Western Medicine in a Chinese Palace, 208.
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