Does China need Nurses?

Two letter lie on the desk. One is from a nurses’ training school connected with a beautiful up-to-date hospital in America. “Will you accept the position of superintendent in our hospital?”

The other is from a missionary secretary. “We are needing a nurse for our oldest hospital in China. The hospital is closed because the doctor is ill in America and will not be allowed to return this year unless someone is found to accompany her back to China. Will you consider going for us?”

On the one hand there is the life in a well furnished hospital, congenial work, friends near, an honored profession, under the stars and stripes—and yet? On the other hand, a foreign land, an unknown tongue, strange people, untried climate, opposition of friends, the end of a career—and yet?

And a voice said, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” Will it be easier to answer the first or the second call? Where is the need greater? The twilight deepens. The tenderest voice the world has ever heard breaks the stillness, “Will you go for me? I need you there. I will teach you to love them because they are mine, and I will go with you all the way.” Peace and content come with the decision. In the morning two letters are mailed. Another superintendent is found for the hospital in America and a few months later the oldest hospital for women in China is reopened.

“China is not ready for and does not need nurses,” was one of the greetings. Never mind about China. She does not always know what she needs. God needed one nurse and perhaps more. Later on in the year he also wanted one more doctor; for February 14 brought a beautiful valentine to this oldest hospital in the shape of a very much alive little doctor lady whom the Chinese people soon named the “Good Doctor.”

All diseases known to mankind crowded into the clinics. Houses with dark, unlovely rooms where the lives of thousands of mothers and helpless babies go out every year; trips out into districts where western medicine had never been before; visits to the leper colony, whose hopeless sisters are waiting release in death; dirt, disease, ignorance and age-long superstition, —all these things make one think that China might use a few nurses if she had them.

No national word for nurse, no textbooks, “work fit only for coolies”—these were a few of the difficulties encountered at the beginning.

Trips were made to other parts of China. Letters, arguments, articles and books were written and translated. Conventions were held. To-day there is a fine nurses’ association of China, with its constitution equal to any in the world, a course of study for Chinese nurses, a nurses’ department in the Medical Journal of Shanghai, a national word for nurse and nurses’ schools starting all over China. Calls for nurses are coming from public institutions, the church and the family. All these things prove that China is ready for nurses and now she realizes her need. This was not accomplished in a day. There were hours of teaching, encouraging and explaining. Tears and prayers often mingled before the novices understood. But at last came the realization that this is the kind of work meant when it is said of the Master, “He came not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give his life.”

FIRST GRADUATING CLASS, WITH DR. LYON IN CENTER, DR. HATFIELD AT RIGHT, MISS SIMPSON AT LEFT

Another scene. Four sweet girl graduates, all dressed in white, step forward to receive their diplomas and school pins. Bishop Bashford has just finished his address, and Mrs. Bashford her charge to the class, as she brings the greetings of a hundred thousand mothers of America to the first nurses to graduate from our oldest hospital in China. No, the oldest hospital is gone, but in its place is being raised the Magaw Love Hospital. “I am come that ye might have life and that ye might have it more abundantly,” is the motto given for the school by Mrs. Bashford. May the graduates of the school ever be worthy to follow in the footsteps of that queen of all nurses, Florence Nightingale, for whom the training school is named.

In these years the hospital family has grown to fifteen girls and if you were to talk with the thousands to whom they ministered last year, the answer would be, “God bless our nurses. Their hearts are warm and their hands tender, like ‘Doctor Jesus’ and they have made us understand his love as no one else ever has before.”
Another letter lies on the desk. “My heart is almost breaking for joy to-day. The first class has just been graduated—my jewels for the King. I would rather have had these five years in China than the highest position that America could offer. Perhaps my life is, as you say, buried, but if so, I find it is in a rich mine and my heart’s wish is that every nurse in America might know the joy of investing a score of years here. I am satisfied with the returns.”

(Written by Miss Cora E. Simpson and first published in Woman's Missionary Friend, December, 1913.)

A Monument in a Graveyard

LAYING THE CORNERSTONE OF THE NEW HOSPITAL

At the Executive in St. Louis, someone said to a group of missionaries, “While you are writing to your many friends, please do not forget to write to the Friend; and if there comes to you any special happening of joy, let your friends share it with you through the Friend.” So to-day I want to tell you about the happiest thing that has happened this year in the “Happy Valley.”

When I first arrived in Shanghai and was waiting for a steamer south, I was entertained in the lovely home of Dr. and Mrs. Lacy. One day Mrs. Lacy asked, “What would you most like to see to-day?” and I told her that one of my greatest desires was to see a Chinese graveyard. She laughed merrily, and replied, “You won’t have to do that to-day, for you are to live in a graveyard.”

When we arrived in Foochow I found that this was so. As soon as one steps outside the compound, graves by the thousand are seen everywhere. My first picnic in China was in a graveyard, and many a service have I since held on the graves.

Last year a dear woman in Baltimore Branch instructed the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society to build her a monument; and our dear secretary mothers, who always know just what is best, wisely decided that the proper place to build a monument is in a graveyard.

During the summer we have been kept busy preparing the piles of sand, brick, cement, and earth for our monument, and laying the foundations. Last week we decided to share our good time with our friends, and invited them in to help lay the cornerstone. The American consul and a large number of the state officials were present, besides Bishop Bashford, Mrs. Bashford, the Foochow Annual and Women’s Conferences, and many other guests.

It will be a year or more before the monument is complete. We have named it the Magaw Memorial Hospital; in Chinese it will be called the Magaw Love Hospital.

In the Annual Report of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, we find this statement: “1875—The first hospital for women in China—Foochow.” Dr. Trask was the founder and builder. The records of those early days read like fairy tales. It was a “red letter day” when that first hospital was dedicated, and through the years its wide-open doors have given a welcome to the tens of thousands of suffering ones who have sought entrance there. How many sad hearts have been healed by the Great Physician, only eternity will tell.

Is it not most fitting that in this, the first year of China’s freedom, should be built the new Love Hospital, given by a western woman to these suffering eastern sisters? If you had been with us that glad day, had seen the happy company and tasted the tea and cakes passed about by the student nurses who were dressed in pretty white suits with blue streamers, had heard the addresses and realized how much our people love this monument and all that it stands for; and then if you could look into the future, down through the beautiful years to come, and know what such a monument will mean to this city, you would say with us: “Truly the building of that monument in the graveyard in the ‘Happy Valley’ is one of the happiest things that has occurred this year.” The happiest day of all will be when it is complete, and we open wide the doors to receive the people who are daily coming to us. Come and help us celebrate our opening day, if you like fire-crackers and a good time!

(Letter written by Miss Cora E. Simpson in 1911, first published in Woman’s Missionary Friend, March 1913.)