Astronomical Chronology, the Jesuit China Mission, and Enlightenment History

This article examines the use of astronomical chronology in Jesuit and secular works of history between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. It suggests that the highly visible adoption of astronomical records in historical scholarship in Enlightenment Europe by Nicolas Fréret and Voltaire was entangled with debates about Chinese chronology, translated by Jesuit missionaries. The article argues that the missionary Martino Martini's experience of the Manchu conquest of China was crucial in shaping his conception of history as a discipline. Political events that unfolded in seventeenth-century China had a marked effect on discussions about emergent world history in eighteenth-century Europe.

The Work of Oliver R. Avison in Comparison to that of Albert Schweitzer from a Post-Colonial Perspective

Compared to Nobel Prize Laureate Albert Schweitzer, Oliver R. Avison is not well known. Seeking to achieve more international recognition for Avison, this article elaborates on Avison's work with hospital and educational institutions from a post-colonial perspective. Schweitzer and Avison each wrote their memoires in an autobiographical style, and this article deals primarily with those writings, which are published under the titles Out of My Life and Thought by Schweitzer and The Land of the Morning Calm by Avison. Schweitzer and Avison were contemporaries and worked in medical service in the colonial period. Thus, they have certain commonalities. However, this article will elaborate on how Avison approached his mission differently in order to promote sustainability, equality and subjectivity in his work. Avison carried out more than mere charity work, he also accomplished sustainable development of his hospital, as well as its affiliated educational institution. The current circumstances of Severance Hospital and Yonsei University in Korea, compared to that of the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, are clear evidence of this. Avison's extraordinary missionary work did not reflect the more negative side effects of colonial heritage intertwined with mission work in the 19th Century. Avison's case should be better known as a model of ecumenical mission towards sustainable development.

Exchange of medicinal plant information in California missions

BACKGROUND

Missions were established in California in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to convert Native Americans to Christianity and enculturate them into a class of laborers for Californios (Spanish/Mexican settler). The concentration of large numbers of Native Americans at the Missions, along with the introduction of European diseases, led to serious disease problems. Medicinal supplies brought to California by the missionaries were limited in quantity. This situation resulted in an opportunity for the sharing of knowledge of medicinal plants between the Native Americans and the Mission priests. The purpose of this study is to examine the degree to which such sharing of knowledge took place and to understand factors that may have influenced the sharing of medicinal knowledge. The study also examines the sharing of medicinal knowledge between the Native Americans and the Californios following the demise of the California Missions.

METHODS

Two methods were employed in the study: (1) a comparison of lists of medicinal plants used by various groups (e.g., Native American, Mission priests, Californios) prior to, during, and after the Mission period and (2) a close reading of diaries, reports, and books written by first-hand observers and modern authorities to find accounts of and identify factors influencing the exchange of medicinal information.

RESULTS

A comparison of the lists of medicinal plants use by various groups indicated that only a small percentage of medicinal plants were shared by two or more groups. For example, none of the 265 taxa of species used by the Native Americans in pre-Mission times were imported into Spain for medicinal use and only 16 taxa were reported to have been used at the Missions. A larger sharing of information of medicinal plants took place in the post-Mission period when Native Americans were dispersed from the Missions and worked as laborers on the ranches of the Californios.

CONCLUSIONS

Sharing of information concerning medicinal plants did occur during the Mission period, but the number of documented species was limited. A number of possible factors discouraged this exchange. These include (1) imbalance of power between the priests and the Native Americans, (2) suppression of indigenous knowledge and medical practices by the Mission priests, (3) language barriers, (4) reduction of availability of medicinal herbs around the Mission due to introduced agricultural practices, (5) desire to protect knowledge of medicinal herbs by Native American shaman, (6) administrative structure at the Missions which left little time for direct interaction between the priests and individual Native Americans, (7) loss of knowledge of herbal medicine by the Native Americans over time at the Missions, and (8) limited transportation opportunities for reciprocal the shipment of medicinal plants between California and Spain. Three possible factors were identified that contributed to a greater sharing of information between the Native Americans and the Californios in the post-Mission period. These were (1) more one-to-one interactions between the Californios and the Native Americans, (2) many of the Californios were mestizos whose mothers or grandmothers were Native Americans, and (3) lack of pressure on the part of the Californios to suppress Native American beliefs and medicinal practices.

Missionaries, measles, and manuscripts: revisiting the Whitman tragedy

The missionaries Marcus Whitman, a doctor, and Narcissa Whitman, his wife, and twelve other members of the Waiilatpu Mission were murdered in November 1847 by a small contingent of the Cayuse Indians in the Oregon Territory. The murders became known as the “Whitman Massacre.” The authors examine the historical record, including archived correspondence held at the Yale University Libraries and elsewhere, for evidence of what motivated the killings and demonstrate that there were two valid perspectives, Cayuse and white. Hence, the event is better termed the “Whitman Tragedy.” A crucial component, a highly lethal measles epidemic, has been called the spark that lit the fuse of the tragedy.

Medical missionaries in China: John Glasgow Kerr (1824-1901) and cutting for the stone

With the introduction of Western medicine into China by Anglo-American medical missionaries in the early 19th century, Reverend Dr Peter Parker at the Canton Ophthalmic Hospital pioneered surgical operations in Chinese patients. The subsequent development of surgery for bladder stones at this institute by Parker's successor Dr John Kerr and colleagues is described.

[Schofield and the first spread of western medicine in Shanxi]

After the Second Opium War, the signing of the Tientsin Treaty and the Peking Treaty legitimized the missionary activities and authorized the missionary the rights to enter inland China for propagating their religious doctrines. In the late 1870s, the"The extraordinary famine of the Ding Wu year"and the subsequent epidemic provided the opportunity for missionaries to enter Shanxi. Dr. Schofield, sent by the China Inland Mission, arrived in Taiyuan in 1880, set up clinics and practised there. He died of typhus after treating a typhus patient in the summer of 1883. Schofield stayed and practised in Taiyuan for 2 years and 8 months. Later, the China Inland Mission and other missionaries donated to establish a Shanxi's first western medicine Hospital to commemorate Schofield. The medical activities of Dr. Schofield enlightened and promoted the Shanxi people's understanding of western medicine.

[Foreign firms and dissemination of western medicine in China before the Opium War]

From the beginning of the 19th century to the Opium War, by taking the advantages of free entering and departing China, and to protect themselves, the foreign firms introduced vaccination technique into China. This is the beginning of the introduction of western medicine to China. After 1807, following the arrival of protestant missionaries, foreign firms became the stronghold for the missionaries to conceal their missionary status so as to propagate the principles of Christianity. With the aid of the business firms employee's legal identity, the missionaries started their activities of delivering western medicines and practices. Later, the business firms gained commercial profits through the subsidizing medical services and infiltration. Although western medicine objectively improved the medical conditions in China and promoted the modernization of Chinese health career, but it cast an important aspect of western aggression against China at the same time.

Dr John Dickinson (1832-1863): The man behind the bird

The surgeon/naturalists Dr John Kirk, Dr Charles Meller and Dr John Dickinson, associated with the Zambezi Expedition (1857-1864) under the leadership of Dr David Livingstone are, like him, credited with the discovery of new species' of birds. A raptor, Falco dickinsoni, is named after Dr John Dickinson. Dickinson, born in the north east of England, trained in medicine in Newcastle upon Tyne. He volunteered to join the Universities' Mission to Central Africa and arrived as part of a second group to join Bishop Frederick Mackenzie, then attempting to build a Mission in Magomero, on the Shire Mountain Plateau in modern Malawi. Livingstone and Mackenzie had sown the seeds of disaster for the first UMCA venture while Dickinson was on his way to Central Africa, and his one meeting with Livingstone was trigger to a chain of events that threatened the whole expedition. Shortly after Dickinson's arrival in Magomero, Bishop Mackenzie and a fellow traveller, Reverend Henry de Wint Burrup, died. Magomero was abandoned and the remaining missionaries retrenched in Chibisa's Village on the River Shire. There, where Dickinson did most of his bird collecting, on 17 March 1863, he died of blackwater fever. Livingstone and Kirk were present at the burial. A marble cross at Chikwawa in Malawi is marker to the event that occurred on the day of Dr John Dickinson's 32nd birthday.

Medical missionaries to China: the antecedents

Notwithstanding the traditional belief that disciples of Jesus Christ introduced Christianity into China, conclusive evidence showed that it was the Nestorian missionaries who entered China in AD 635. Alongside commercial contacts between the West and China during the prosperous T'ang dynasty (618-906), trepanation, bloodletting and the universal antidote theriac were introduced from the Byzantium Empire. Nestorian Christians built churches throughout China and offered some form of medical services. During the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty (1260-1368), foreign physicians were present in the Royal Court; the most famous was the astronomer, linguist and physician Ai-hsieh (Isaiah), Head of the Imperial Medical Bureau. With the fall of this dynasty, Christianity, being primarily the faith of a foreign community, naturally fell into oblivion. It was not until the sixteenth-century's Age of Discovery when a safe sea route to China was found that a new phase of Christian missionaries began.

[Struggle against infectious diseases in children in the Magallanes region: death, passion and life. (Part II)]

The first part of this work was published in the previous issue of this magazine. In order to finalize with the historical review of infectious diseases which have been determining factors on regional infant mortality, we analyze firstly the case of religious missions and its impact on the rapid extinction of Patagonian Indians. Secondly, we review the health situation of Punta Arenas during the first half of the 20th century, switching from a high mortality rate from infectious or contagious diseases, to a remarkable improvement in this issue, coming to bear the best health indicators in the country.

[The movement to establish a Christian medical school proposed by medical missionary "John C. Berry"]

John C. Berry (1847-1936) came to Japan in 1872, worked as a medical missionary for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM . He attempted to influence Japanese medical education toward a more Christian-influenced approach. In early Meiji, the Japanese government adopted the German language and principles for its national medical program. This promoted a tendency towards the adoption of German concepts in Japanese medical education. The director of of Doshisha, Niijima, was concerned about such a tendency, which he considered rather science-oriented or skeptical and atheistic, according to his writings. The tradition of corruption among Japanese doctors also deeply disappointed him. Niijima sought the type of medical institution in which the students would learn Western medicine based on a moral base of Christianity, presumably in Kyoto, to take advantage of the foundation of Doshisha, which had already been built. Missionaries in Japan, especially Berry, supported Niijima's intentions. During his visit to the U.S. he promoted a mission statement in support of Niijima's idea in order to raise funds among Christian communities. This project produced a resolution among the Christian community in Philadelphia to establish an interdenominational foundation for establishing such a medical institution and it encouraged other cities to follow. However, the American Board of Missionaries in Japan disagreed with the idea of its being interdenominational, and then, along with other struggles such as the lack of funding in light of the economic slowdown, and the widespread social rejection of Christianity in Japan, the project fell apart and was suspended.

Healthcare and warfare. Medical space, mission and apartheid in twentieth century northern Namibia

In the year 1966, the first government hospital, Oshakati hospital, was inaugurated in northern South-West Africa. It was constructed by the apartheid regime of South Africa which was occupying the territory. Prior to this inauguration, Finnish missionaries had, for 65 years, provided healthcare to the indigenous people in a number of healthcare facilities of which Onandjokwe hospital was the most important. This article discusses these two agents' ideological standpoints. The same year, the war between the South-West African guerrillas and the South African state started, and continued up to 1988. The two hospitals became involved in the war; Oshakati hospital as a part of the South African war machinery, and Onandjokwe hospital as a 'terrorist hospital' in the eyes of the South Africans. The missionary Onandjokwe hospital was linked to the Lutheran church in South-West Africa, which became one of the main critics of the apartheid system early in the liberation war. Warfare and healthcare became intertwined with apartheid policies and aggression, materialised by healthcare provision based on strategic rationales rather than the people's healthcare needs. When the Namibian state took over a ruined healthcare system in 1990, the two hospitals were hubs in a healthcare landscape shaped by missionary ambitions, war and apartheid logic.

Resistance and religion: health care in Uganda, 1971-1979

This article situates women's roles in community health care during violence in Uganda in the 1970s. It examines the lived reality of Catholic missionary sister nurses, midwives, and physicians on the ground where sisters administered health care to local communities. The goal is to examine how religious women worked with local individuals and families in community health during periods of violence and war. Catholic sisters claimed to be apolitical, yet their mission work widened to include political issues. As they saw local Ugandans threatened, sisters engaged in political activities by their identification with and protection of "their people."

Women, religion, and maternal health care in Ghana, 1945-2000

This article documents the historical factors that led to shifts in mission work toward a greater emphasis on community health for the poor and most vulnerable of society in sub-Saharan Africa after 1945. Using the example of the Medical Mission Sisters from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and their work in Ghana, we challenge the conventional narrative of medical missions as agents of imperialism. We assert that missions-particularly those run by Catholic sister physicians, nurses, and midwives-have changed over time and that those changes have been beneficial to the expansion of community health, particularly in the area of improvement of maternal care.

The protestant medical missions to China: Dr Thomas Richardson Colledge (1796-1879) and the founding of the Macao Ophthalmic Hospital

A surgeon of the British East India Company, Dr Thomas Richardson Colledge, founded the Macao Ophthalmic Hospital in 1827. This was not only the first Western hospital ever opened in China for the purpose of bringing modern medicine to the Chinese but also the precursor of similar efforts of later medical missions in China. The gratifying results of this institute proved that employing Western medicine was an effective way to introduce Christianity to China and to open her door to the outside world. Though not a missionary himself, Colledge is rightfully regarded as the originator of medical missionaries to China.

The Protestant medical missions to China: the introduction of Western medicine with vaccination

Modern medicine in China began with the arrival of Anglo-American Protestant missionaries in the early 19th century. Conditions were vastly different from the times of the Jesuits in Peking during the 17th and 18th centuries, when the priests enjoyed the endorsement of the Court and high officials. Faced with hostile and xenophobic officialdom and populace, surgeons of the British East India Company in collaboration with missionaries took the initiative. In 1805 Dr Alexander Pearson (1780-1874) introduced smallpox vaccination in Macao and Canton. Reverend Dr Robert Morrison (1782-1834) of the London Missionary Society with another East India Company Surgeon, Dr John Livingstone (1829) opened a dispensary for the poor in Macao in 1820. These pioneers paved the way for later Anglo-American medical missionaries who revolutionized medical practice in China.

Indian hospitals and government in the colonial Andes

This article examines the reception of the early modern hospital among the indigenous people of the Andes under Spanish colonial rule. During the period covered by this study (sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries), the hospital was conceived primarily as a manifestation of the sovereign’s paternalistic concern for his subjects’ spiritual well being. Hospitals in the Spanish American colonies were organised along racial lines, and those catering to Indians were meant to complement the missionary endeavour. Besides establishing hospitals in the main urban centres, Spanish colonial legislation instituted hospitals for Indians in provincial towns and in small rural jurisdictions throughout the Peruvian viceroyalty. Indian hospitals often met with the suspicion and even hostility of their supposed beneficiaries, especially indigenous rulers. By conceptualising the Indian hospital as a tool of colonial government, this article investigates the reasons behind its negative reception, the work of adaptation that allowed a few of them to thrive, and the eventual failure of most of these institutions.

Dr Walter Henry Anderson (1870-1937) and the mission hospital at Safed, Palestine

Walter Henry Anderson, a brewer's clerk in Burton-upon-Trent, became a missionary doctor, supported by a society promoting welfare and evangelism in Jewish communities abroad. His family background was rich in pastoral ministry at home and adventure abroad. Arguably, this background played a part in his decision to serve the Jews of Safed. His life in Palestine entailed much enterprise and hardship as he raised a family, fought disease and set up a mission hospital serving not only the Jewish community but persons of all faiths. His years in Palestine, from 1894 to 1915, were times of peace in the Middle East before the turmoil unleashed by the Great War. Jews from the Diaspora were gaining an increasing foothold in Palestine, their 'Promised Land'. Themes of that era - the rise of Zionism, confrontation between Judaism and evangelical Christianity, conflict between immigrant Jew and Palestinian Arab and the remarkable travels of Lawrence of Arabia were interwoven with the lives of Dr Anderson and his family.

The 'Mandarin-missionary' strategy: Robert Kennicott, Spencer Fullerton Baird and specimen collection in the Hudson's Bay Territory

In 1859, Robert Kennicott, one of the most promising specimen collectors and young naturalists in the United States, was dispatched to Hudson's Bay Territory by Spencer Fullerton Baird, the Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian. Kennicott was chosen because of previous experience in Canada, the familiarity with biota of the American Midwest, and because he had a boundless, infectious, enthusiasm for natural history that was typical among Baird's closest protégées. Kennicott was a natural scientific envoy--or missionary--to the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, and many officers were enthusiastically 'converted' to the cause of collecting and/or overseeing the collection of natural history specimens. Due to this collaboration between Baird, Kennicott and the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, the Smithsonian became a leading center of Canadian natural history in the Western hemisphere.

[Research on the hospital construction and structure in Daehan empire and colonial modern period]

It was the late Chosun Dynasty and Daehan Empire era that Western Medicine has firstly been introduced to Korea, previously operating on a basis of Korean traditional medicine. Western Medicine has been introduced by American missionary and Japanese Imperialism. An introduction of Western Medicine made it feasible to proceed new type medical care including operation, leading to require a new form of medical facilities. In the beginning, new facilities were constructed by Japanese Imperialism. Other hand many of facilities including Severance Hospital were established by missionaries. First of all, Daehan Empire established and managed a modern type of medical facility named "Jejoongwon" in 1885 as a government institution hospital. The Red Cross Hospital built in 1889. Afterwards, Jejoongwon and the Red Cross Hospital were taken over to missionary hospital and Japanese Imperialism, respectively. Japanese Imperialists firstly have protected their nationals residing in Chosun but have proceeded care a few Chosun people to exploit medical treatment as a mean to advertise superiority of the Empire of Japan. The facility that has firstly been established and managed was Jeseang Hospital in Busan in 1877, leading to establish in Wonju, Wonsan, and Mokpo. Afterwards, Japan has organized "Donginhoi" as a civil invasion organization, leading for "Donginhoi" to established "Dongin Hospital" in Pyeongyang, Daegu, and Seoul. Since 1909, governmental leading medical facility named Jahye Hospital was established according to an imperial order, leading to establish 32 hospitals all over the nation. American missionaries have established and managed 28 hospitals started from Severance Hospital built in 1904. However, Chosun doctors started to having educated and opening up their own hospital since 1920, leading for many of medical facilities to be established, but most of them have taken different roles followed by 6.25 War and economic development period. However, some of them are currently under protection as cultural assets, and some of them are now preserved. Buildings have originally been structured of wood as a single story in the beginning, but bricks started to be steadily used, leading to build two story building. Each of clinic department started to be separated since 1920, establishing operation room and treatment room. Now, a change of perception as to buildings that need to be preserved and an attention from government and doctors are required since modern medical facilities keep disappearing.

Discovering the African freshwater "torpedo": legendary Ethiopia, religious controversies, and a catfish capable of reanimating dead fish

The electric catfishes of African rivers and lakes, once depicted on Egyptian tomb art, have been largely overlooked in histories and reviews of electric fish biology and animal electricity. This article examines how Westerners, especially Dominican and Jesuit missionaries, discovered them in Ethiopia and other parts of Africa at the beginning of the seventeenth century. What transpired took place against the backdrop of tales involving the Bible, Prester John's mythical empire, and imaginary animals with fabulous powers. In effect, how they were found is related to attempts to convert Ethiopian Christians to true Catholicism, hopes of discovering great riches, and opportunities to trade, and not with the efforts of skilled natural philosophers to document and conduct experiments on the wildlife of this continent. Nevertheless, the early descriptions by Europeans circulated, and during the next century these catfishes began to be used in experiments that helped to make animal electricity a reality.

Medical missionaries to China: the Jesuits

The 15th and 16th centuries saw a religious revival in Europe and an increased interest in church missions. With geographical discoveries supported by strong monarchies in Spain, Portugal and later France, Catholic missions and in particular the Society of Jesus resumed the spread of Christianity to China. Convinced that it was wise policy to address themselves to the most influential upper classes, the Jesuits under the leadership of Father Matteo Ricci became friendly with the aristocrats and the intelligentsia. The Jesuits introduced Western scientific ideas into China and even practised medicine. Between periods of adversity and persecutions, Chinese emperors who valued them for their scientific expertise generally tolerated their missionary activities. Any lasting influence on Chinese culture was limited.

Missions and medicine at Amherst: family ties to Edward Hitchcock jr, the missionary movement, and the American University of Beirut

The Haystack Movement began at Williams College in 1805, occasioning the spread of American missions throughout the world. A half century later, two graduates of nearby Amherst College, Edward Hitchcock Jr and Daniel Bliss, laid the foundations for college health services in this country and for mission work and education in the Middle East. The influences of these two 19th century Amherst alumni are still felt today in our college health services and at the American University of Beirut.

Did Darwin change his mind about the Fuegians?

Shocked by what he considered to be the savagery he encountered in Tierra del Fuego, Charles Darwin ranked the Fuegians lowest among the human races. An enduring story has it, however, that Darwin was later so impressed by the successes of missionaries there, and by the grandeur they discovered in the native tongue, that he changed his mind. This story has served diverse interests, religious and scientific. But Darwin in fact continued to view the Fuegians as he had from the start, as lowly but improvable. And while his case for their unity with the other human races drew on missionary evidence, that evidence concerned emotional expression, not language.

[Tamil medicine and the perception of pietist missionaries of the Danish-Halle Tranquebar Mission in the 1st half of the 18th century]

The cooperation between medical systems of different cultures is a widely discussed problem. In an historical example, the perception of Tamil medicine by the Pietist missionaries of the Danish-Halle Mission in the first half of the 18th century illustrated the different meaning assigned to diseases and cures as well as differences in medical treatments compared to European medicine. Published for over 60 years starting in 1708, the Halle Reports enable us to understand the changes and developments in the relationship between the European and Tamil cultures that met in Southern India. The entrance of the first-generation Pietist missionaries (until 1720) was clearly silhouetted against a behavior that was directed at suppressing the traditional and asserting the European forms of cultural practice. They developed forms of a partnership-like association which is still discernable in the edited reports. The encounter between the Pietist missionaries and Tamil culture can be characterized as both empirical and critically reflective thanks to excellent language skills and an open-minded perspective.

Remedial agents: missionary physicians and the depopulation of Hawai'i

This article examines the activities and perspectives of nineteenth-century American missionary physicians in the Hawaiian Islands. The physicians' attitudes toward Hawaiian morbidity and depopulation are viewed in relation to the greater missionary community's role in the political transformation of the island nation. The article argues that missionary physicians monitored and reported on Native Hawaiian depopulation (a result of introduced western diseases) while simultaneously advertising the islands' benefits to American consumptives, imperialists, and others. Mission doctors also failed to respond effectively to the greatest epidemiological crisis Hawai'i had ever faced: a venereal scourge with a resulting blight of Native Hawaiian infertility. As a result of these and other factors, American hegemony in Hawai'i by midcentury was a foregone conclusion.

["And thus there was another pointless thing in the country [...]". The failed homoeopathic training of missionaries at the Basle Mission]

This article deals with the unsuccessful attempts to allow missionaries of the Basle Mission to undergo homoeopathic training. Before the Mission undertook systematic medical missionary work in society in the 1880s, there were various requests and suggestions to train the missionaries in homoeopathy. Here, these attempts are put into a greater context of the research into "Homoeopathy and Mission". It becomes clear that Hahnemann's teachings were certainly used in the Mission, even if finding this out is sometimes arduous.

Searching for success: boys, family aspirations, and opportunities in Gabon, ca. 1900-1940

Boys growing up in rural Gabon between 1900 and 1940 negotiated with many challenges: the rise of migrant labor, famines and hardships brought on by World War I, the growth of Christianity and African-based spiritual traditions, and the undermining of clans, which had been the main form of social and political organization in the nineteenth century. Parents, extended family members, missionaries, and European businesses recruited boys to serve their varied interests. Boys in turn developed new self-understandings by leaving their homes as students, workers, and clients of older men. This article examines the life histories of four boys to trace the successes and challenges that individual boys encountered in this turbulent era. Interestingly, older biological relatives of boys generally succeeded in maintaining their authority over children living far from home, although the education and wages that boys received forced older men to offer boys more benefits.

"Mrs. Tilley had a very hasty wedding!": the class-based response to marriages in the Grenfell Mission of Newfoundland and Labrador

The International Grenfell Association (IGA) attracted hundreds of single young women for nursing in northern Newfoundland and Labrador between 1939 and 1981. Under contract with the Mission, the Grenfell nurse was expected to behave in a non-sexual manner and uphold a strict moral code of behaviour. However, the Grenfell experience provided nurses with a unique opportunity for socializing with young men who ranged the social spectrum, from fishermen and labourers to medical professionals. This paper highlights the relationships and marriages of the nurses that developed during or immediately after their tenure with the IGA and evaluates the Grenfell Mission's class-based responses to those relationships. The administration responded either positively or negatively to nurses' marriages, depending on the socioeconomic background of the husband in question. Marriages to physicians or dentists were almost always celebrated while marriages to local men were usually questioned or treated with ambivalence. From the perspective of the IGA, the social status of the nurse could be raised or lowered depending on the socioeconomic background of her marriage partner.

Child slaves and freemen at the Spiritan Mission in Soyo, 1880-1885

Catholic missionaries in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Africa more commonly than Protestants purchased slaves to build their mission stations. This article provides a micro-historical analysis of the redemption of child slaves by the Holy Ghost Fathers in Soyo, West Central Africa, in the years immediately preceding the colonial partition of Africa. It argues that the Spiritan missionaries liberated slaves for instrumental rather than humanitarian reasons. As local freemen were difficult to control, the mission depended for its growth on the import of slave children. Furthermore, since the missionaries operated on the same markets and paid the same prices for slaves as regular buyers, their purchasing practices showed a strong resemblance with ordinary slave trading.

The leprosy asylum in India: 1886-1947

Writing against a historical practice that situates the leprosy asylum exclusively within prison-like institutions, this article seeks to show the variation in leprosy asylums, the contingencies of their evolution, and the complexity of their designs, by devoting attention to the characteristics of the leprosy asylum in India from 1886 to 1947, in particular to the model agricultural colony. Drawing upon the travel narratives of Wellesley Bailey, the founder of the Mission to Lepers in India, for three separate periods in 1886, 1890-91, and 1895-96, it argues that leprosy asylums were formed in response to a complex conjunction of impulses: missionary, medical, and political. At the center of these endeavors was the provision of shelter for persons with leprosy that accorded with principles of good stewardship and took the form of judicious use of donations provided by benefactors. As the Mission to Lepers began to bring about improvements and restructuring to asylums, pleasant surroundings, shady trees, sound accommodation, and good ventilation became desirable conditions that would confer physical and psychological benefits on those living there. At the same time, the architecture of the asylum responded to economic imperatives, in addition to religious and medical aspirations, and asylums moved towards the regeneration of a labor force. Leprosy-affected people were increasingly employed in occupations that contributed to their sustenance and self-sufficiency, symbolically reincorporating the body damaged by leprosy into the economic world of productive relations.

[The establishment and development of Blyth hospital in Wenzhou]

Blyth hospital was the earliest church hospital established by western missionaries in Wenzhou, since then, western medicine had been introduced into Wenzhou. The establishment and development of Blyth hospital greatly accelerated the development of Wenzhou local medical and health work so that the health level of the Wenzhou people improved. The objectives, pattern, experience and characteristics of the establishment of the hospital played a certain revelatory role in modern medical work and medical education.