Western Missionaries Spread Western Medicine Around the World

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Western Missionaries Spread Western Medicine Around the World

Overview

Missionary activities expanded dramatically during the nineteenth century, introducing Western medicine to the "uttermost ends of the earth." These movements stemmed from the period at the end of the eighteenth century known as the "Great Awakening," when powerful evangelists converted large masses to Christianity. To propagate the Christian faith, groups organized to send people to other countries. The term missionary derives from the Latin word mittere, meaning to send, and refers to sending one on an errand.

During the nineteenth century, the evangelical mission of the church converged with the precepts of Western culture and experimental medicine. Missionaries, such as David Livingstone (1813-1873) in Africa and Adoniram Judson (1788-1850) in Burma, were not only preachers of the gospel but explorers who disseminated medical knowledge to the new cultures they encountered. Inland missions, such as those in the Asia, established schools that trained native doctors. Missionaries contributed directly toward the expansion of Western medicine and thinking, and laid the foundation for health care systems of the twentieth century throughout the world.

Background

The nineteenth-century merger of missionary zeal and medicine had roots in two separate traditions—the Evangelical church with Christ as healer and the development of scientific medicine. In Christian history, plagues and illness have been a flagship for missionary causes. The incurable diseases that struck the Roman empire during the first three centuries A.D. provided major thrusts toward establishing Christianity as a world force. Jewish communities were recognized for their morality and their care for the sick and poor. When Christianity emerged from the Jewish community, the same concerns were carried on. In disasters such as the plagues of Orosius in 125 A.D. and Antoninus 164-180 A.D., Christians cared for the sick and dying and gained respect of the community. Although Christians had compassion, the Church itself actively repressed scientific thought and discovery for over 1,000 years. Medical advances were stifled until the end of the fifteenth century.

The precepts of Western medicine can be traced to the age of scientific thought that flourished between 1550 to 1700. Some very specific ideas about the body and disease developed that distinguished Western medicine from longstanding traditional medicine and Eastern philosophy. With the transformation of thought about the nature of the physical world during this time, traditions of Greek and Islamic Arabic medicine were replaced by the findings of experimental science. The British scientist William Harvey (1578-1657), who discovered the circulation of the blood, along with French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650), usually are credited with this beginning. The development of Western medicine was characterized by the following: 1) the idea that the human body is a machine, a reflection of the Western conception of a division or duality of mind and body (Eastern medicine, on the other hand, asserted the unity of mind and body); 2) a close association with the use of tools and devices; 3) the development of germ theory and efforts to identify specific conditions and their corresponding diseases; 4) concentration on diagnosis and treatment rather than on promoting health or preventing illness; and 5) emphasis on direct observation of patients. In the decades after the Great Awakening, missionary activity carried these ideas and medical approaches throughout the world.

Impact

The prophetic world vision developed when ministers began preaching that God had commanded Christians to evangelize the world. The father of modern missions was Englishman William Carey (1761-1834), a village cobbler who became a scholar and linguist. He founded the first foreign missionary organization, the Baptist Missionary Society, in 1792. When he set sail for India in June 1793, there was much excitement in both England and America. On February 6, 1812, five American missionaries were ordained. Four months later Adoniram Judson arrived in India. The movement built up steam, then sent forth missionaries from English-speaking countries throughout the world, bringing with them Western culture. Carey worked for 30 years to organize a growing network of missionaries. As a student of botany and agriculture, he also spread scientific thinking in his mission schools.

Throughout history, missionaries from all religions have transplanted both their religious and secular cultures. Christian missions of the nineteenth century especially sought to impose their own culture and beliefs upon foreign converts. Missionaries taught Western education, medicine, architecture, music, work habits, and dress. Evangelical missionaries were generally highly trained and might be called to work in various areas. They started schools, promoted agricultural improvements, taught hygiene, and an advanced standard of living. In this way, Western missionaries promoted what was known about Western medicine.

Even those not trained as physicians became disseminators of medicine. The evangelicals began preaching to call sinners to God, which then evolved into social concern. A wide variety of churches were involved as these evangelists went to foreign fields. In 1797 the Netherlands Missionary Society was formed, and in 1810 the American Board of Commissioners. Roman Catholics also began a new thrust. For example, Joseph Damien de Veuster (1840-1888) was a Belgian Catholic missionary to a leper colony in Hawaii. Known as Father Damien, he cared for the lepers' needs and gave them medical aid until he himself died of leprosy.

In the 1820s and 1830s overseas missions became a regular part of English and Scottish church life. The relationship between colonial expansion and missions is complex. Missionaries were simply following the flag of their countries and were not working to expand new territories. However, the missionary movement and imperial or colonial expansion ended up as fellow travelers.

Many countries were interested in China as a mission field. The Chinese Evangelization Society sent Dr. James Hudson Taylor to found the China Inland Mission in 1865. His goal was to take the gospel to every part of the Chinese empire, which had just opened up to the West. Late in the nineteenth century Canadian missionaries organized medical training in Chengdu, Sichuan, a province in southwest China. Five Western mission boards joined to begin a medical and dental school. Missionaries were agents of change in China. They have even been referred to as "Evangelists of Science." These colleges provided an institution for the interaction of the two cultures and transmission of Western medical knowledge. The Chinese medical elite provided the backbone through the upheavals in China in the twentieth century.

Jesuit missionaries and Dutch physicians took Western medicine to Japan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. European books on anatomy and medicine written in the eighteenth century set the stage for a Japanese text on physiology in 1836. Like China, the medical schools founded by missionaries developed an elite group of medical personnel dedicated to Western medicine. James Curtis Hepburn (1815-1911) was a Presbyterian missionary doctor to Singapore when he developed malaria. He became one of the first missionaries to Japan. During the last part of the eighteenth century the Japanese government had encouraged the westernization of Japanese medicine. Japanese scientists contributed great medical breakthroughs, such as the discovery of the plague bacillus in 1894 and a dysentery bacillus in1897. Alexander Duff (1806-1876) established the Vellore Medical College in 1860 for education of Indian nurses and women physicians. A majority of India's nurses have been Christians.

The scramble for influence and the colonization of Africa brought in missionaries. David Livingstone was from a poor Scottish family and struggled to gain medical qualifications to become a medical missionary. He was sent by the London Missionary Society in 1841 and became most famous as an explorer. Traveling widely through Central Africa on waterways such as the Zambezi River, he mapped more uncharted territory than any white man and was honored as the hero who found Victoria Falls. His travels spread Western medicine to major areas of the continent. Missionaries like Livingstone and Robert Moffat (1795-1883) vigorously opposed the slave trade and were influential in anti-slavery movements.

Nineteenth century missions had their first notable successes in Polynesia, Madagascar, and the East Indies. Although India and China became only one to two percent Christian, the missionaries still impacted medicine. In Burma, Korea, Ceylon, and Indonesia, significant churches developed. Africa proved difficult because so many missionaries died of tropical diseases, which Western medicine was not developed enough to combat. Wilfred Thomas Grenfel (1865-1940) was a British medical missionary who established a chain of hospitals and nursing centers in Labrador.

It is hard to realize that in the nineteenth century missionaries were at the forefront of public awareness. In the twentieth century they have been stereotyped and satirized as long-frocked, plain people with safari hats. One typical secular joke showed a missionary in a pot about to be cooked by savages, with a caption reading, "Would you care to say grace?" Also, some of the missionaries enthralled readers back home with biographies of exotic and amusing encounters with "savages." Missionaries of the century garnered large crowds and much attention back home, very similar to astronauts of today. When they spoke, auditoriums were packed. By the end of the nineteenth century, missionaries had spread into almost every conceivable part of the world. With them was carried Western influence and Western medicine.

EVELYN B. KELLY