Directory_and_Chronicle_1841 — Page 39

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Medical Philanthropic Society.

JAN.

The efforts of this new Society we hope will be commensurate with the exigencies that have called it into being. In the prospectus, a reference Inight, we think, with propriety have been made to an institution established in Macao by Dr. Morrison, and thus noticed by Dr. Pearson in 1821. Dr. P. says: "Some months ago, Dr. Morrison instituted a dispensary for supplying the Chinese poor with advice and medicines, which he superintends himself from one to two hours every morning. I have also been able to give pretty constant attendance, and have had an opportunity of observing the details of Chinese practice, in from about ten to fifteen cases daily. * * * I am happy to say that the institution has already done much good-much human suf- fering has been relieved. Upwards of 300 patients have made grateful acknowledgments for renovated health." A native physician and apothecary was employed as an assistant in this establishment, with the occasional at- tendance of an herbalist. See the Anglo-Chinese Gleaner for January, 1821, pp. 6, 7.]

THE honor of founding the first institution, for conferring upon the Chinese the benefits of European science in medicine and surgery, is due to Dr. T. R. Colledge, surgeon to the English factory in China. Observing the prevalence of diseases of the eye among this people, and their entire unskillfulness in treating them, he opened, in 1837, an Ophthalmic Hospital in Macao, in which, during the five years of its continuance, more than four thousand persons were relieved, not only of those disorders, but likewise of other maladies. This establishment was closed in 1832, from an increase of medical duties devolving upon Dr. Colledge, in consequence of the departure of the late respected Dr. Pearson to England.

The success which had attended it led Dr. Colledge, in 1834, to suggest to Dr. Parker, a physician from the United states, to esta- blish a similar institution in Canton, which, after a course of increas- ing usefulness, has been brougnt to a close (only a temporary one it is hoped) by the political events, which have lately interrupted Brit- ish intercourse with China.

The eagerness with which the Chinese, not only of the lower, but the higher ranks,* availed themselves of the benefits thus afforded them; and the influence which the evident superiority of western science had over their own, in softening ther national prejudices, led the benevolent promoters of these measures to contemplate the prac- ticability of conferring, in union with them, blessings of a still higher order. It is well known, that the late eminent Dr. Morrison, and others associated with him, after translating the Holy Scriptures into the Chinese language, had for many years endeavored, by the circulation of them and other publications, to lead the people of that country to

* The author of the interesting work on China, entitled Fanqui, states the case of two young ladies, brought by their parents, persons of consideration, from Nanking, a distance of many hundred miles, to the institution in Canton, for dis- orders in their eyes, and who returned cured.

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