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

y the Rockefeller Foundation’s China Medical Commission, by the 1910s there were only
around 450 medical missionaries and physicians in China, 45-55 Chinese physicians trained in
the United States or Europe, plus a few trained in China or Japan. By the 1920s, that number had
grown to 1,500, including 600 medical missionaries or other foreigners, resulting in one modern
physician for every 300,000 people in China. During the same period, there were around 2,000
nurses in China and 500 hospitals, mostly in urban areas. 78 The need for trained personnel was
critical.
Mission hospitals in Canton began informal training of male students as early as 1835.
The Canton Medical Missionary Hospital (Canton Hospital, Boji yiyuan 博济医院) was founded
by Dr. Peter Parker in 1835 as China’s first Western medical institution. It was run by the South
China Mission of the American Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. By 1879, a more
structured medical program was in place, a three-year curriculum with 16 male students,
including three Cantonese women who enrolled at their own request. This was the earliest
formal medical training for women, aside from Dr. Julia Sparr’s single female medical student in
Fuzhou in 1871. 79 The Canton Hospital students came from the True Light Seminary for Girls,
also run by the Presbyterian South China Mission and located across the street from the hospital.
Miss Mary Niles, MD, and Miss Mary Fulton, MD, arrived in Canton in 1882 and 1884,
respectively, to teach female medical students and attend women and child patients. John G.
Kerr, Peter Parker’s successor in 1854, recognized the potential to reach upper-class women with
native female physicians. Missioners often complained of not being able to reach the upper
classes to convert them to Christianity, who would in turn exert greater influence throughout
China. Trained native female medical personnel could attend female patients in the wards and in
78 Rockefeller Foundation, Medicine in China, Yip, Health and National Reconstruction.
79 Stinson, Work of Women Physicians in Asia, 21.
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