Lay theory of healing in northwestern New Spain

Northwestern New Spain experienced not only a territorial and a spiritual conquest, but a medical conquest. This medical conquest came from a tradition, established after the conquest of central New Spain, that had fused classical medicine of the Old World with medicine of indigenous groups, in the writings of European doctors and scientists as well as graduates of Mexican colleges. The medical conquest of Sonora was accomplished by laymen, explorers and missionaries who carried the theory of healing resulting from these syncretic processes into the northern lands, adding new materials that they learned from indigenous peoples there. When the Indians were ill with epidemic disease or injuries, they were cared for by missionaries brought up on European domestic medicine. The theory of illness and its cure held by the lay healers became predominantly that of the conquest culture. The conquerers', missionaries' and colonists' interpretations of native plant, animal and mineral remedies that they learned from northwestern native medicine were colored by their own concepts of disease and healing, resulting in an epistemology which continues to guide lay or domestic medicine not only in Sonora but also in the rest of the American Mexican west today.

The first anaesthetic in Central Africa

The Reverend Doctor Robert Laws (1851-1934) followed in the footsteps of David Livingstone to Central Africa. At the beginning of a long and distinguished career as a medical missionary in Christian service to the country that has since become the Republic of Malawi, he was a prime mover in the setting up of a mission station at Cape Maclear, on the shores of Lake Malawi (formerly known as Lake Nyasa and closely associated with the discoveries of Doctor Livingstone). There, on 2 March 1876, Laws used chloroform to produce surgical anaesthesia when he operated on a young African male who had a cystic tumour above his left eye.

Dr. Robert McClure: missionary-surgeon extraordinaire

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Missionary doctors vs Chinese patients: credibility of missionary health care in early twentieth century China

This paper deals with the encounter between the Chinese and Western medical missionaries in early twentieth century China. Based on data of two Canadian Protestant missions in China before 1937, this study reveals that medical missionaries were generally ignorant of Chinese medicine, and they regarded Chinese medicine as part of an inferior, heathen culture. Such a 'mission-centric' perspective prevented the missionary doctors from creating an effective doctor-patient relationship with the Chinese patients. To the Chinese, missionary health care provided an additional health care pathway. The functional complementarity of Western medicine to the pluralistic Chinese medical structure enabled missionary medicine to gain increasing credibility from the Chinese, although few Chinese actually understood the basic principles of Western medicine. Implications of this missionary doctor-Chinese patient relationship in China are discussed.

A mission doctor's experiences in West Africa

The hardships and rewards of a medical missionary's life in a primitive part of Northern Nigeria in the 1940s and 1950s are in themselves an article of faith.

[Medical study of missionaries returning from overseas]

The missionary Fathers live in very difficult conditions, very near local populations. The length of their stay is normally of 19 years (from 1 to 61 years). Among 345 files, most of which were drawn up after a stay in Asia, the malaria antecedents were found to be very frequent. The intestinal parasitic infestation (approx. 30%) is lower than in the autochthonous population with a majority of Trichuris trichuria (11%).

Hereditary physicians of the Scottish islands

With the demise of the delivery of health-care by the Columban missionaries in the Scottish islands, there evolved a system of medical care by clan officers. These highly educated clan-physicians held office through hereditary tenure. Evidence is strongest for the existence of the Beaton physicians, but other families, including the O'Conachers, MacLachlans and MacLeas, held similar appointments. These hereditary physicians declined in importance with the demise of the clan system, when other physicians, holding patronage from the landlords, came to the islands.

Health and society in China: public health education for the community, 1912--1937

The paper studies the public health education activities of the American medical missionaries, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Nationalist government, and the Mass Education Movement in China during 1912--1937. It argues that the mission-oriented policies of the medical missionaries as well as the 'technique' approaches of the Rockefeller Foundation which were adopted by the majority of the health officials of the Nationalist government were inappropriate in an agrarian country like China. The Mass Education Movement, by combining health education with the improvement of the living conditions of the people as a whole, proved to be quite successful although it too failed to utilize the traditional medical system in public health activities.