Bamboo Stone: The Evolution of a Chinese Medical Elite

Peter Martin is a senior projects editor at the University of Ottawa
Press.

Canadians came late to China. By the 1890s others had staked claims in
the rich coastal cities, so Canadian evangelicals were obliged to seek
souls to save in remote Sichuan, above the gorges of the Yangtze. They
were enthusiastic. The Reverend Virgil C. Hart, a Methodist, called
Sichuan “an empire in itself, with its teeming millions,” and he
exulted, “Only think of the opportunity God has given me to establish
another mission, and for Canada!”

Sixty of the Canadians who went to Sichuan were medical missionaries:
at first, evangelists with medical training, and later medical people
and teachers whose lives were meant to demonstrate Christian values.
Although expelled or forced to flee five times between 1895 and their
final withdrawal in 1952, the Canadians created medical, dental, and
pharmaceutical faculties within West China Union University. Their 800
graduates became teachers and clinicians in their turn, and firmly
established Western medicine in China.

This is a story of courage and determination, of challenges met and
obstacles overcome. The author lays it out crisply and clearly, with all
the scholarly apparatus neatly in place. It’s a pleasure to encounter
a social scientist who writes good English. Too bad, though that the
exigencies of scholarship rule out storytelling; there are adventure
novels on the epic scale buried in this material, and maybe another in
the introduction. A bit of Indiana Jones lurks in the research that went
into this “longitudinal study of technology transfer.”