Notable Women of Modern China Part 8

The hospital was formally opened on the seventh of December, 1901, during the annual meeting of the Central China Methodist Mission, held that year at Kiukiang. The _North China Daily Herald_ gives the following account of this interesting occasion:

THE OPENING OF A MODEL HOSPITAL IN KIUKIANG

"On Sat.u.r.day afternoon the 7th instant, some foreign residents of Kiukiang, the members of the Methodist Central China Mission, and many native friends gathered together at the formal opening of the Elizabeth Skelton Danforth Memorial Hospital, of which two ladies, Drs. Stone and Kahn, are the physicians in charge. There were a number of Chinese ladies, whose rich costumes showed the official rank and wealth of husbands and fathers. The Chen-tai, prefect, a.s.sistant prefect and magistrate added their official dignity to the occasion. These were noticeably appreciative of the first hymn, 'G.o.d save the Emperor.'"

"Bishop Moore presided, formally opening the hospital; Mr.

Clennell, H.B.M., Consul for Kiukiang, gave a very good address, to which Dr. Stuart, American Vice-consul of Nanking, made fitting response. Then followed short, pithy speeches by Drs. Beebee and Hart. The two heroines of the occasion kept modestly in the background, refusing to be introduced, much to the disappointment of the audience. The officials insisted that coming forward would be in entire harmony with etiquette and propriety, but the Chinese young ladies remained firm and were represented by their wise teacher, Miss Howe, who has planned with them and for them since their childhood. After refreshments guests were at liberty to saunter across verandas and through the various wards, the room for foreign patients, the convalescents' room, solarium, dark room, offices, reception room, etc., of this admirably planned hospital.

The operating room with its skylight, its operating table of gla.s.s and enamel; the adjoining sterilizing room, containing apparatus for distilling, sterilizing, etc., are especially interesting to Chinese visitors. The drug rooms are well stocked and furnished with modern appliances, instruments, a fine microscope, battery, etc., and there is the nucleus of an excellent library. Everywhere one finds evidence of wise forethought and careful expenditure."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dr. Stone, Dr. Kahn, and Five of the Hospital Nurses]

"The Chinese have a high regard for the skill and ability of these gifted young physicians. One sees this appreciation, not only in the commendatory tablets hanging in the entrance hall, but in their equally gracious and more serviceable gifts, which together with fees amounted this year to about $2,500. The doctors have had within the last twelve months, 7,854 patients and have made 531 out-visits. Their services have been requested by different official families of Kiukiang and Nan-chang, the capital of Kiangsi. Patients come to them from different provinces. The young physicians fearlessly make journeys far out in the surrounding country, crossing the mountains perhaps, but always in perfect safety, as they meet only with respect and courtesy. Sometimes after a successful visit their chairs will be draped with a red cloth and the physicians will be carried home in triumph through an admiring crowd, and accompanied all the way by fire-crackers. They hear only pleasant and complimentary remarks from pa.s.sersby. 'We are afraid of foreigners, but you can understand our nature'--so the simple-minded country folk sometimes tell them."

Dr. Stone, describing the opening of the hospital to Dr. Danforth, wrote, "The Chinese were very much impressed with your way of commemorating your wife." Dr. Kahn added that one of the highest officials, who was being shown through the building, signified his approval by emphatically declaring, "It would make any one well merely to stay in such a pleasant place."

As a matter of fact, work had been carried on in the new building for some time before the formal opening. It had been ready for occupancy none too soon, for in the summer of 1901, the Yangtse River overflowed its banks, working great havoc among the crops and homes of the people living near it.

Dr. Stone wrote Dr. Danforth: "Tens of thousands have been rendered homeless and dest.i.tute. Some of them are literally starved to death. The sick and hungry flock to our gates, and for several months we have had over a thousand visits each month to our dispensary." Some idea of the part which the hospital played in relieving the sufferings of the flood refugees is given by an article in _Woman's Work in the Far East_, written by Dr.

Stone at about this time:

"Perhaps friends would like to know how we dispensed the clothes and quilts so kindly sent us. During the winter months very many needy refugees came to our dispensary daily for treatment. Of course we did not have enough clothes to distribute indiscriminately, but only for those who were the most helpless and miserable. We received them by hundreds, and not only had we to give out medicine, but rice, as well as clothing."

"One morning when it was raining outside, an old woman came into our dispensary all exhausted, carrying a child on her back, and another b.u.t.toned in front within her clothes. The older one was a boy three years old and the tiny baby in her bosom was only three months old. They proved to be her grandchildren, and the old woman said: 'Never in our lives have we gone out to beg before, and for the last three days we have not had a morsel to eat. Before the floods we were considered well-to-do people, and my son is forty years old and a literary man; so he is too ashamed to beg, but tries to help the family by gathering sticks for the fire. His wife is sick in bed with typhoid fever and now the baby has no one to nurse it, and the boy is sick, and I have to take care of them all and beg for a living.' The woman had on only a lined garment, so we gave her one of those wadded gowns that were sent us, and a tin of milk for the baby, and also sent a little rice to make gruel for the sick woman at home."

This was only one of many cases of need which the hospital sought to alleviate. A few days after Christmas of this year Dr. Stone wrote to a friend in America: "What a busy time we had getting ready to celebrate the joyful event! We gave a good square meal to the refugees, and let them take home what they could not finish here. It made me feel happy to see them so pleased, and gave us an opportunity to tell them of the greatest Gift to mankind. Although we were so rushed that we did not even sit together to eat our regular meals, yet we felt it was the happiest Christmas we have ever had."

In addition to the refugees larger numbers of regular patients than ever before were coming to the doctors for treatment. The new hospital had hardly been opened before Miss Howe wrote, "Patients who are able to bear their own expenses are being sent away, because the present accommodations are already overtaxed."

Just at this time, when the doctors' growing reputation, and the increased facilities which the new buildings afforded, were greatly enlarging both opportunity and responsibility, the question of Dr. Kahn's going to Nanchang to open medical work there arose. It is not surprising that at first Dr. Stone wondered how she could spare her friend and fellow-worker, now that the work was greater than ever before, and every indication pointed to large growth in the future. But when she became convinced that the opportunity at Nanchang was too great to be neglected, and that only Dr. Kahn could meet it, she bade her G.o.d-speed and cheerfully accepted the added burden thus laid upon her.

Left alone with the entire work in Kiukiang, Dr. Stone's hands were full indeed, as the answer which she gave to a request for a synopsis of her day's work shows: "We breakfast at half-past seven and then I go to the chapel in the hospital and conduct prayers for the inmates and patients able to attend. After prayers I make a general inspection of the hospital, and then I teach my cla.s.s of nurses. I take young native girls in their teens and give them a thorough course of training such as they would get in America. I translate the English books into Chinese for them, and sometimes put the Chinese books into English too. Then I go to the dispensary and am busy there for hours.... In the afternoons I make calls, generally on women of rank who need my a.s.sistance and have been unable to get to the hospital. I return home only when here seems no further work for me that day."

So far from decreasing in number after the medical force had been lessened by half, the stream of patients became larger than ever. A few weeks after Dr. Kahn had gone, Dr. Stone said, in a letter to Dr. Danforth: "For a long time I have been wanting to write to you, but have been so pressed with work that I had to let my correspondence suffer. Now I find that I must write to you to let you know how crowded we are already, at this season when we generally have a scarcity of patients, as it is Chinese New Year.

Now that our work is better known we seem to draw a better cla.s.s of people.

I don't mean very rich people, but the well-to-do, thrifty cla.s.s, who earn their way by labour. Just now I have to accommodate seven private patients who are paying their own way, with only two private rooms at my disposal.

So what do you think I do? I had to put one in our linen room, one in the sewing room, one in a bathroom, and finally, as a last resort, we had to put one in the nurses' dining-room.... We generally have to put patients on the floor in summer, but I am afraid we will not have enough room to accommodate more even on the floor."

Dr. Stone's dispensary patients soon averaged a thousand a month, and as the people's confidence grew, her surgical work also became much heavier.

In 1906 she reported: "In looking over the record for the year we realize that we have advanced decidedly in gaining confidence with the people.

_Tai-tais_ (ladies of rank) who formerly refused operations, returned to us for help."

Often her work kept her busy far into the night and she not infrequently fell asleep from sheer exhaustion as she was carried home, in her sedan chair, from some difficult case in the country. Yet her work was well done.

The tribute of a fellow-missionary was well deserved: "Dr. Stone is a tower of strength in herself and with her trained a.s.sistants carries the large work here n.o.bly. She has been eminently successful in surgical cases and is having more and more to do in this line." Another, working in a different station, wrote, "It was my happy fortune to be the guest of another ideal Chinese woman, Dr. Mary Stone, at Kiukiang. I saw her in her model hospital, where every little wheel of the complicated machinery was adjusted to perfect nicety."

As the work grew, it became evident that larger accommodations would soon be imperative, and Dr. Stone succeeded in securing some additional land.

The first addition was a lot which she had long desired to enclose within the hospital grounds. For some time she was unable to do this because of a road which ran between, but in 1905 the road was moved to the other side of the lot, at her pet.i.tion, and the land was included within the hospital compound. "Most of the neighbours have been patients and are friendly," one of her letters reports. "When the magistrate came to see about moving the road to the other side of the lot only one man objected. He was soon pacified by the magistrate's remark that 'the hospital here is for the public good, and when it is in our power to do it a service, we should gladly do it.'" Another piece of land was purchased during the same year, by money raised entirely from the Chinese.

The next addition greatly delighted Dr. Stone's heart. Adjoining the hospital was a temple known as "The White Horse Temple." This was so close to the hospital that it made one of the wards on that side damp and dark, and, moreover, the noisy crowds of people who thronged it, and the beating of the temple gongs, made it a most undesirable neighbour for a hospital.

Immediately after the annual meeting at which Dr. Stone had been enabled to report the purchase of the other lots, a cablegram came from America with the good news that $1,000 had been secured for the purchase of the temple and the lot on which it stood. Purchasing a temple is quite sure not to be an easy task, but in spite of many hindrances Dr. Stone succeeded in securing the lot and in making what she gleefully termed "a real Methodist conversion" of the temple into an isolation ward.

In 1896 Dr. Stone had landed in China and with Dr. Kahn begun medical work in a small, rented Chinese building. In 1906 she found herself in sole charge of a large, finely equipped hospital for women and children, with a practice which was increasing so rapidly as to make constant additions to the hospital property necessary.

[Ill.u.s.tration: General Ward of the Danforth Memorial Hospital]

III

WINNING FRIENDS IN AMERICA

In 1907, after eleven years of almost unceasing labour, during four of which she had carried the growing work at Kiukiang entirely alone, except for the help of the nurses whom she herself had trained, Dr. Stone reluctantly laid down her beloved work for a few months. During the winter of 1906 she had a severe attack of illness which she herself diagnosed as appendicitis, and for which she directed treatment which brought her relief. But renewed attacks finally convinced her and her friends that she must submit to an operation if her life was to be saved. It was decided that she should go to an American hospital, for as a fellow physician located at another station of the mission wrote, "We all have a very high regard for her and her work, and wanted her to get the best that could be had." Moreover, it was a good opportunity to get her "away from China for a much-needed change and rest."

Accordingly Dr. Stone, accompanied by her friend, Miss Hughes of the Kiukiang mission, sailed from Shanghai, February 9. President Roosevelt, who was acquainted with her work and knew of her serious condition, had a telegram sent to the Commissioner of Immigration at San Francisco, giving instructions that the Chinese physician be admitted with no delay or nerve strain. She was therefore pa.s.sed at once, with all consideration and all possible help.

From San Francisco Dr. Stone went straight to the Wesleyan Hospital in Chicago, that she might be under Dr. Danforth's care. The operation was entirely successful, and early in April, less than a month after reaching America, she was sufficiently recovered to take the trip to Miss Hughes'

home in New Jersey, where she was to rest for a few weeks.

Complete rest, however, was an impossibility to Dr. Stone, even during her convalescence, so long as there was any service she could render. Two weeks after her arrival Miss Hughes wrote Dr. Danforth that "our little doctor"

was accompanying her to several of the meetings which she was addressing, and was "making friends right and left for her work." Boxes of instruments, pillows, and spreads for the hospital beds, a baby organ for the hospital, the support of a nurse, and other useful things were being promised by these new friends. "Her smiling face, with no word from her even, is a wonderful revelation to people who judge the Chinese by the putty-faced laundrymen, the only specimen of China they have ever seen," said Miss Hughes. Dr. Stone spent the month of May in New York, attending lectures and clinics in the hospitals there. As she was starting for Chicago at the end of May, she wrote Dr. Danforth:

"Do you think I shall be able to see much clinic in two weeks? That is the only time allotted me, and my only hope is that you will be the 'master of the situation,' and help me to spend every minute to the best advantage.... I have attended as much clinic as I possibly could this month, but it is awfully hard to get around in New York.

Do you suppose I would be able to go directly to Wesley Hospital Monday, and do you think Dr. J---- would have the time and the interest to show me the inside methods of the hospital? He wrote me a most kind letter and invited me to do so.... Two weeks will mean a lot if I can be right in the inside track of things. I want some time on the eye and ear work, besides a few clinics on dermatology.

I know two weeks will not be enough for the much I want to see and know, but since it is the only time I am to have, I know you will help me to make the most of it."

Thus did the indefatigable little doctor take the "much-needed rest" of which her friends in China had written. That she did make the most of her two weeks is testified to by Mrs. Danforth, who visited many of the hospitals with her, and who says: "In visiting the hospitals she never missed a thing. She saw everything--nothing escaped her notice, not even the laundries. She was always keenly alert for every idea that would improve her hospital."

On her way back to the East, Dr. Stone stopped at Ann Arbor, for she was eager to revisit her "dear old campus," and the faculty under whom she had taken her medical work. "We had a lovely time in Ann Arbor," she said in writing to a friend. "Dr. Breakey, in whose home we stayed, arranged a meeting, or reception, where I saw most of my old professors. Then in the parsonage we met all the ladies of our church. Next day I had a meeting in the church."

The next few months were filled with almost incessant labour, chiefly speaking and making friends for her work. The cordial responses which she met everywhere never became an old story to Dr. Stone and her letters are full of enthusiastic accounts of them. "Here at Silver Bay, a society wants to support a missionary and we hope to find the missionary to-night. The first was yesterday's work and the second we hope to gain to-day." Again, "Last night on the car we met a gentleman whom I know through my sister Anna, and after a few minutes' talk he wants to give me his camera, 5x7, for hospital work. Isn't that splendid?" Or, "This morning we went into a flower-seed store and what do you suppose the proprietor did but to give us the seeds, a big list of all kinds we wanted, and then offered to add a few more varieties. We are having lots of fun here."

Dr. Stone met with no less enthusiasm in public meetings than in her contact with individuals. One of her hostesses tells of her remarkable success in arousing genuine interest in her work: "She spoke at churches very often while she was with us, and not once did she fail to get what she asked for. She did not ask for things in general but for definite things,--pillows for the beds, lamps for the gateway, etc. She is irresistible."

The same friend tells of the glee with which Dr. Stone, whose English is perfect, delighted to learn modern slang phrases. After practising them in the bosom of the family she would sometimes innocently introduce them into her addresses, invariably bringing down the house thereby. At one meeting, after telling a most remarkable story, she remarked, "You may think this is a whopper, but it is true!"

Reports of the meetings at which she spoke contain such items as this: "The pastor of St. James Church offered to duplicate all money given in the collection when Miss Hughes and Dr. Stone spoke. Six hundred and eighty-two dollars was the result. A gentleman present offered one hundred dollars for a speech from Dr. Stone in his church. The speech was made and one hundred and eighty-two dollars put in the treasury." Other items read: "At the district meeting a new auxiliary came into being in ---- Church. No one could resist Dr. Mary Stone's persuasive tones as she went up and down the aisles asking, 'Won't you join?' She told the people how much she needed a pump in Kiukiang and forthwith the pump materialized." The _New York Herald_ gave a long and enthusiastic report of her work, ending with the words: "'Am I not fortunate? And I am so grateful to be able to help a little!' is the modest way she sums up a work of magnitude sufficient to keep a corps of medical men busily employed."

Everywhere this little Chinese woman made friends. The words of one of her hostesses are emphatic: "She was in our home for a month, and she is one of the most attractive women of any race I have ever met. She is so charming that she wins her way everywhere." "She is so gracious and cordial," said another. "She came into our family just as a member of it. I was not very well at the time and she gave me ma.s.sage every night. Her whole life and her whole interest is in doing for others. And the wonderful thing about her is her ability to do so much." "No missionary that we have is more greatly loved," is the verdict of another.

Dr. Stone greatly enjoyed her stay in America. "Dr. Danforth called my appendix 'that blamed thing,'" she said. "I call it that blessed thing, because it brought me to this country and people have been so kind to me."

But she was eager to return to Kiukiang, and early in September was on her way back to China, rejoicing in renewed health and new friends for her work, and in the many gifts which were going to make that work more efficient.

IV

A VERSATILE WOMAN