Notable Women of Modern China Part 7

"As stiff a course as possible ought to be arranged and if it is thought best the whole thing might be outlined by the China Medical Missionary a.s.sociation. For entrance requirements there should be presented a solid amount of Chinese and English, with some Latin and perhaps one other modern language. That may seem a great deal to ask at present, but our higher schools of learning ought soon to be able to supply such a demand, as well as the necessary training in mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc. In other words the student must be equipped in the very best manner for his lifework."

"During the present generation at least, if not longer, the women of China will continue to seek medical advice from women physicians, and to meet the demand we must confront and solve another problem. Co-education is impracticable just at this juncture. We must have either an annex to the men's college, or a separate one entirely. Whichever plan is adopted it matters not, barring the 'lest we forget' that it is just as important to establish medical schools for women as for men."

"In the golden future when schools abound we shall have to think of state examinations; but at that time we shall expect to be ready to greet the blaze of day in this wonderful country of ours, when she has wakened from the long sleep we often hear about, and taken her place among the nations of the world, and G.o.d and man shall see 'that it is good.'"

At the close of 1907 Dr. Kahn had been back in China for twelve years, years of arduous, almost unremitting labour; and her fellow missionaries felt that before the work on the new hospital building began she ought to have a vacation. Certainly she had earned it. Not only had she worked faithfully for seven years in Kiukiang, but she had, within the five succeeding years, established medical work in a large city, where she was the first and only physician trained in Western sciences. a.s.sisted only by two nurses whom she herself had trained, she had kept her dispensary running the year around, all day and every day. Moreover, she had kept the work practically self-supporting, in spite of the fact that she had refused to economize by using inferior medicines, or bottles of rough gla.s.s which could not be thoroughly cleansed. She had insisted that her drugs be of the purest, and dispensed in clean, carefully labelled bottles, and had often furnished besides the food needed to build up strength. In addition to all this, she so commended herself and her work to the people of the city that in 1906 she was enabled to hand over to the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, a dispensary building and two fine building lots, to be used for a hospital and physician's home.

She was finally persuaded to go to America for a period of change and rest.

"Rest" for Dr. Kahn evidently means a change of work; for she went at once to Northwestern University to take the literary course which she felt would fit her for broader usefulness among her countrywomen. Eager to get back to China she did three years' work in two, studying in the summer quarter at the University of Chicago, when Northwestern closed its doors for the vacation. In addition to her University studies, she undertook, for the sake of her loved country, a work which is peculiarly hard for her, and almost every Sunday found her at some church, telling of the present unprecedented opportunities in China.

The question may perhaps be raised as to whether days could be crowded so full and yet work be done thoroughly. But Prof. J. Scott Clark of Northwestern University said of her, at this time: "Dr. Kahn is one of the most accurate and effective students in a cla.s.s of eighty-four members, most of them soph.o.m.ores, although the cla.s.s includes many seniors. The subject is the study of the style and diction of prominent prose authors, with some theme work. Last year Miss Kahn attained a very high rank in the study of the principles of good English style during the first semester, and in that of synonyms during the second semester. In the latter difficult subject she ranked among the very best students in a cla.s.s of over three hundred members. She is very accurate, very earnest, and very quick to catch an idea. In fact she is nothing less than an inspiration to her cla.s.smates."

In the spring of 1910 Dr. Kahn was a delegate to the Conference of the World's Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation held in Berlin, and from there went to London for six months of study in the School of Tropical Diseases.

She had planned to return to Northwestern University to complete the work interrupted by her trip to Europe, and to receive her degree. Her work had been of so unusually high a standard, however, that she was permitted to finish her course by correspondence, and was granted her degree in January, 1911. She completed her course in the School of Tropical Diseases with high honour, and in February, 1911, she reached Nanchang, where one of her fellow-workers declares, "she is magnificent from the officials' houses to the mud huts."

The new hospital was still in process of building, but the doctor began work at once in her old dispensary, and the news of her return soon spread.

In a short time she was having an average of sixty patients a day, and several operations were booked some time before the hospital could be opened. It was ready for use in the autumn and in October Dr. Kahn wrote: "The work has gone on well, and patients have come to us even from distant cities clear on the other side of Poyang Lake. The new building is such a comfort. It looks nice and is really so well adapted for the work. I would be the happiest person possible if I did not have to worry about drug bills, etc.... It is impossible to drag any more money out of the poor people. Our rich patients are very small in number when compared with the poor. Yesterday I had to refuse medicines to several people, though my heart ached at having to do so. You see I had no idea that the work would develop so fast, and things have risen in prices very much the last few years."

At the time that this letter was written the Revolution was in progress, and Nanchang, with all the rest of Central China, was in a turmoil. Because of the disturbed conditions most of the missionaries left the city, but Dr.

Kahn refused to leave her work. With the help of her nurses she kept the hospital open, giving a refuge to many sufferers from famine and flood, and caring for the wounded soldiers. None of the forty beds was ever empty, and many had to be turned away.

The close of the Revolution did not, however, bring a cessation of work for the doctor. She already needs larger hospital accommodation, three times as much as she now has, one of her friends writes. But Dr. Kahn delights in all the opportunities for work that are crowding upon her; for she says, "When I think what my life might have been, and what, through G.o.d's grace, it is, I think there is nothing that G.o.d has given me that I would not gladly use in His service."

DR. MARY STONE

I. WITH UNBOUND FEET

II. THE DANFORTH MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

III. WINNING FRIENDS IN AMERICA

IV. A VERSATILE WOMAN

[Ill.u.s.tration: [Handwritten] Yours in His service Mary Stone]

DR. MARY STONE

I

WITH UNBOUND FEET

On the "first day of the third moon" of the year 1873, a young Chinese father knelt by the side of his wife and, with her, reverently consecrated to the service of the Divine Father the little daughter who had that day been given them. They named her "Maiyu,"--"Beautiful Gem"--and together agreed that this perfect gift should never be marred by the binding of the little feet. It was unheard of! Even the servant women of Kiukiang would have been ashamed to venture outside the door with unbound feet, and the very beggar women hobbled about on stumps of three and four inches in length. No little girl who was not a slave had ever been known to grow up with natural feet before, in all Central or West China. That the descendant of one of the proudest and most aristocratic families of China, whose genealogical records run back without a break for a period of two thousand years, little Shih Maiyu, should be the first to thus violate the century-old customs of her ancestors, was almost unbelievable.

Even the missionaries could not credit it, not even Miss Howe, whose interest in the family was peculiarly keen, since Maiyu's mother was the first fruits of her work for Chinese women, and had ever since been working with her. To be sure Mrs. Shih had said to her, "If the Lord gives me a little daughter I shall not bind her feet." But Miss Howe had made so many efforts to induce the women and girls with whom she had worked to take off the crippling bandages, without having been successful in a single instance, that she did not build her hopes on this. One day, when calling in the home and seeing little Maiyu, then five years old, playing about the room, she remarked, "My dear Mrs. Shih, you will not make a good job of it unless you begin at once to bind little Maiyu's feet." But Mrs. Shih never faltered in the purpose which she and her husband had formed at the little girl's birth, and promptly answered, "Did I not tell you I should not bind her feet?"

The first years of Maiyu's life were unusually happy ones. Her father was a pastor in the Methodist church, and had charge of the "Converting to Holiness" chapel in Kiukiang; her mother was successfully conducting a day school for girls. From her mother Maiyu received much of her earliest instruction and before she was eight years old she had studied several of the Chinese cla.s.sics and memorized the Gospel of Matthew and the catechism in Chinese so thoroughly that she has never forgotten them.

But as she approached the age when custom required that her feet should be bound, the little girl discovered that the way of the pioneer is not an easy one. The unbound feet were a constant source of comment and ridicule, not only by older people, but by other children as well. She was stopped on her way to school one day by an older girl, who taunted her with her "big feet" and refused to let her pa.s.s unless she would kneel down and render obeisance to her own bandaged stumps. The small descendant of the proud house of Shih absolutely refused to submit to such humiliation; but it was only after her mother's a.s.sistance had been invoked that she was allowed to proceed on her way.

Relatives and friends protested vigorously against such apparent indifference to their daughter's future on the part of her parents. "You will never be able to get a mother-in-law for her," they declared. Mr. and Mrs. Shih felt, no doubt, that this was true; for who could have then prophesied that the time would so soon come in conservative old China when young men would not only be willing to marry girls with natural feet, but would decidedly prefer them! Maiyu's father and mother never reconsidered their decision that their daughter should grow to womanhood with natural feet; but they did try to devise some plan by which her life might be a useful and happy one, even though she might never enjoy the blessing of a mother-in-law. They were very much impressed with the service which Dr.

Kate Bushnell was rendering the suffering women and children of Kiukiang, and when Maiyu was eight years old her father took her to Dr. Bushnell and announced, "Here is my little girl. I want you to make a doctor of her."

This was almost as startling as the unbound feet! A Chinese woman physician was unknown and undreamed of. But this young father's faith in the possibilities of Chinese womanhood was not to be discouraged. The necessity of general education, preliminary to medical training, was explained, and Maiyu was put in charge of Miss Howe, then at the head of the Girls'

Boarding School of the Methodist Mission. In this school she spent most of the next ten years of her life, studying in both Chinese and English, and fitting herself under Miss Howe's direction for her medical course.

In 1892, Maiyu and her friend, Ida Kahn, accompanied Miss Howe to America, there to receive the medical education for which they had long been preparing. If America held much that was new and interesting to them, it was no less true that they were something new and very interesting to America. "What makes these girls look so different from the other Chinese women who come here?" the Government official who examined their pa.s.sports asked Miss Howe. "All the difference between a heathen and a Christian,"

was her prompt response.

That there were Chinese girls who could successfully pa.s.s the entrance examinations to the medical department of the University of Michigan, in arithmetic, algebra, rhetoric, general and United States history, physics, and Latin, was a revelation to the people of America, and their college career was watched with the greatest interest.

While in Ann Arbor, Maiyu took pity on the professors who found it so difficult to p.r.o.nounce her Chinese name, and decided to use the English translation of it, Mary Stone, during her stay in America. Accordingly one morning when the professor started to call on her, she announced, "I have decided to change my name, professor." The burst of laughter with which the cla.s.s greeted this simple statement was most bewildering to her; but after she had seen the joke she often declared that she was "one of the products of Christianity, an old maid," for, as she pointed out, an unmarried woman is practically unknown among non-Christians.

During her medical course Mary became more strongly impressed than ever before with the evils of foot-binding. Her mother's feet had, of course, been bound in childhood, and although Mrs. Stone had never bound the feet of any of her daughters, she had not unbandaged her own. For she said that if she also had unbound feet people would say: "Oh, yes, she must be from some out-of-the-way place where the women do not bind their feet, and so she does not know how to bind the feet of her daughters. That accounts for such gross neglect." On the other hand, she reasoned that if she herself had the aristocratic "golden lily" feet, it would be evident that her failure to bind her daughters' feet was due to principle. But while Mary was pursuing her medical studies she became convinced that the time had come when her mother ought to register a further protest against the harmful custom, by unbandaging her own feet, and wrote urging her to do so.

Mrs. Stone readily agreed to this. Moreover, at the annual meeting of the Central China Mission in 1894, when a large ma.s.s-meeting was held for the discussion of foot-binding, she ascended the platform and in a clear voice, which made every word distinctly heard to the remotest corner of the large chapel hall, told why she had never before unbound her feet, and why she was now about to do so. Her husband was so in sympathy with her decision that later in the meeting he added a few words of approval of the course she had taken. The last shoes worn before the unbinding, and the first after it, were sent to Ann Arbor to the daughter who had so long been a living exponent of the doctrine of natural feet.

After four years at the University of Michigan, during which she and her friend, Dr. Ida Kahn, had won the respect and friendship of both faculty and students by their thorough work, Dr. Stone went to Chicago for the summer, in order to attend the clinical work in the hospitals there. It was at this time that she met Dr. I. N. Danforth of that city, who was ever afterward her staunch friend. He was about to leave for Europe, but found time before his departure to introduce Dr. Stone to many of the Chicago physicians and hospitals. He says: "She won the hearts of all with her charming ways, and got everything she wanted. When I took her to clinics she would often not be able to see at first, being such a little woman; but the first thing I knew she would be right down by the operating table. The doctors would always notice her, and seeing that she couldn't see would open up and let her down to the front." After what Dr. Danforth considered a thorough clinical training, including visits to practically all the good hospitals in Chicago, Dr. Stone sailed for China with Dr. Kahn, reaching there in the autumn of 1896.

II

THE DANFORTH MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

On their return to China, Dr. Stone and Dr. Kahn received a most enthusiastic welcome from the Chinese. It had been expected that it would be necessary for them to spend the first few months in overcoming prejudices and gradually building up confidence. But on the contrary, patients appeared the third day after their arrival, and kept coming in increasing numbers, until in December it became necessary to rent dispensary quarters and rebuild a Chinese house to serve as a hospital. Dr.

Stone reported in July, 1897, that since October of the preceding year, she and Dr. Kahn had treated 2,352 dispensary patients, made 343 visits, and had thirteen patients in their little hospital, besides spending a month in Nanking visiting the hospitals there.

The following year the little hospital was presented with what was probably its first, though by no means its last, "merit board." One of Dr. Stone's letters gives an account of this event:

"Two days ago we had quite an occasion. A child had been sick for a long time, and the best Chinese physicians p.r.o.nounced him incurable. Then it was that they gave us a chance. He is recovering and the parents, wanting to show their grat.i.tude, gave us a 'merit board,' thinking in this way they would 'spread our fame.'

Accordingly a day was selected to present the board to us, and we prepared tea and cakes for those who would come. On the day appointed at 2 P.M., we heard a lot of fire-crackers, rockets, and guns, and a band playing the flute and bugle at the same time. The 'merit board,' consisting of a black board with four big carved and gilded characters in the centre, and with red cloth over it, was carried into our guest hall by four men, and set on the centre table. The characters complimented us by a comparison with two noted women of ancient times, who were great scholars. I acknowledged the honour with a low Chinese bow, and a tall, elderly gentleman returned me a bow, without a word being spoken by either of us. Then I withdrew, and he took tea with two of our gentlemen teachers. The company stayed to see the board put up on our wall."

As the fame of the young physicians grew and their practice steadily increased, they found themselves greatly hampered by lack of a proper building in which to carry on their work. In 1898 Dr. Stone wrote back to America: "Our tiny hospital is crammed full. An observer might think that we carried home but a slight idea of hygiene. Our hospital measures on the outside 28 by 21 at Chinese feet (our foot is one inch longer than yours) and we have been compelled to crowd in twenty-one sleepers. The building being so small and not protected from the heat of the sun by any trees or awnings, by evenings it is fairly an oven, which is certainly not a very desirable place for sick people. We are looking forward all the time for signs or signals from the women of America to build our new hospital, but not a letter comes to bring us this kind of message. Still we are thankful for the hope of building some time."

This hope was realized almost at once, largely through the generosity of the friend Dr. Stone had made in Chicago, Dr. I. N. Danforth, who felt that no more fitting memorial could be erected to his wife than a hospital for Chinese women and children. Dr. Stone and Dr. Kahn drew their own plans and sent them to Chicago, where they were perfected in every detail by an architect of that city, and sent back to Kiukiang with the necessary specifications and instructions. These plans were carried out to the letter and in 1900 an airy, grey brick building, finished with white granite and limestone, plentifully supplied with comfortable verandas, and bearing over its pillared entrance the name, "Elizabeth Skelton Danforth Memorial Hospital," was ready for occupancy. But on the very day that the furniture was moved in, the American consul advised all foreign women and children to leave Kiukiang immediately. The other missionaries were so unwilling to leave the young doctors to face the possible dangers from the Boxers alone, that they finally prevailed upon them to go to j.a.pan with them.

The hospital escaped any injury, however, and in her report for 1900, Dr.

Stone said: "Our new hospital is a comfort and constant inspiration to us in our work. We were indeed grateful, after half a year's enforced exile, to come home and find it intact and ready for use.... During six months there have been 3,679 dispensary patients, 59 in-patients, and 414 visits."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Elizabeth Skelton Danforth Memorial Hospital, Kiukiang, China]