Translators, traitors, and traducers: Perjuring Hawaiian same-sex texts through deliberate mistranslation

In the long history of the West's encounter with Hawaiian culture, which began in the late 1700s with Captain Cook, translators and translations have often been the tools of intentional falsehood, thus demonstrating the truth of the Italian proverb, Traduttore, traditore ("the translator is a traitor")--particularly with regard to same-sex texts. The standards of truth have often been subverted in translation by the demands of foreign religion, hegemony, business, and academe. This subversion continues to this day in the form of the "missionary mentality" in politics and law. The way out of this situation is a brutally honest cleaning-off of the besmirched Hawaiian texts.

[Neurological diseases in late 19th century Taiwan--medical reports of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs]

Western medicine was introduced to Taiwan in 1865 when Dr. James L. Maxwell, a missionary doctor of the English Presbyterian Church, established a hospital in nowadays Tainan. The period of the missionary medicine lasted for over 30 years until Japanese took over. During this period, however, official records of diseases in Taiwan that were based on Western medicine were scanty or not available. Fortunately, port surgeons stationing respectively in Tamsui and Kelung in the north and in Takow and Taiwan-fu in the south reported semi-annually diseases seen in the ports, foreign communities and missionary hospitals that they volunteered to work. The diseases reported by port surgeons were either cases or summary of cases with classification and statistics. Their medical reports covered from 1871 to 1900. The data show that neurological diseases and/or disorders in the late 19th century Taiwan were uncommon, comprising only 2-3% of total diseases. The data further show that common neurological diseases were leprosy, opium smoking, syphilitic dementia (GPI), paralysis, hysteria, neuralgia, epilepsy, mania, sciatica, meningitis and ataxia. Stroke was uncommon while Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease were not mentioned, indicating that neurological diseases related to old age and neurodegeneration were not yet a threat to health. Similarly, headache, insomnia, anxiety and depression, hallmark of functional disorders of the modern society, were also not mentioned, suggesting that these disorders were indeed rare or did not cause sufficient concern for patients to seek help from doctors of Western medicine.

Mansonella perstans causing symptomatic hypereosinophilia in a missionary family

Mansonella perstans is rarely pathogenic. The rare reports of symptomatic cases, however, include severe complications. Three cases of symptomatic hypereosinophilia with multi-organ involvement are described in a missionary family returning from tropical Africa. Pathogenicity may be related to the induction of hypereosinophilia rather than direct host-parasite interactions.

Jesuit scientific activity in the overseas missions, 1540-1773

Within the context of national traditions in colonial science, the scientific activities of Jesuit missionaries present us with a unique combination of challenges. The multinational membership of the Society of Jesus gave its missionaries access to virtually every Portuguese, Spanish, and French colony. The Society was thus compelled to engage an astonishingly diverse array of cultural and natural environments, and that diversity of contexts is reflected in the range and the complexity of Jesuit scientific practices. Underlying that complexity, however, was what I see as a unique combination of institutional structures; namely, European colleges, overseas mission stations, and the regular circulation of personnel and information. With this institutional framework as a backdrop, I briefly trace what I see as the most salient themes emerging from recent studies of Jesuit overseas science: (1) the Societys ability to use scientific expertise to its advantage amid the complex web of dependencies upon which it missionary activities rested; (2) the ability of its missionaries to become intimate with a wide range of cultures and to appropriate natural knowledge held by indigenous peoples, especially in the fields of material medica and geography; and (3) the different ways Jesuits used published accounts of "remote nature" (i.e., natural histories of overseas colonies) to advance their corporate and religious causes.

Private volunteer medical organizations: how effective are they?

Religious and other secular organizations have been involved with medical missionary work in sub-Saharan Africa for centuries, especially in remote provinces and villages. In times past, most of these countries were under the control of foreign powers. Private volunteer organizations operated within a structured environment, which, perhaps, facilitated their mission and their ability to review and evaluate their effectiveness because of the tight control the colonial powers maintained over every facet of native life. However, the transition from colonialism to independence has resulted in a different environment in which healthcare is fragmented and a low priority in most countries because of financial constraints. The lack of standardization, vintage laboratory equipment, a manual medical record system, lack of a subsidized transportation system, infrequent postal service and the absence of phone systems in the remote provinces and villages make treatment and tracking of patients, monitoring therapy and measuring outcomes/results difficult. Therefore, judging the effectiveness of an initiative in remote district hospitals and village clinics can be difficult. This manuscript addresses some of these issues and provides solutions to some that have been effective for one organization.

Medical volunteers: guidelines for success and safety

Many African Americans from a variety of medical specialties are interested in satisfying a life-long dream of visiting Africa by volunteering their services to faith-based and private volunteer organizations doing missionary work on the continent. While this can be an extremely rewarding experience in which measurable good can be accomplished, this path can also be strewn with many obstacles that will affect both the success of the mission and the personal well-being of the volunteer. The American Medical Team for Africa is a nonprofit, tax-exempt, volunteer organization that has been doing medical missionary work in Africa since 1993. This manuscript is a compilation of this 10-year experience that has established some very useful guidelines for insuring a successful and safe mission if you are fortunate enough to have this opportunity.

[On Mackenzie, a missionary of the London Mission]

Mackenzie, a missionary of the London Mission, came to China in 1875. He first did missionary works in Hankou and moved to Tianjin in 1879, during which he established the London Mission Hospital and a medical school under the assistance of Li Hongzhang. He made certain contributions to the elimination of diseases in Chinese people and the spread of western medicine.

'Wanted: 16 nurses of the better educated type': provision of nurses to South Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

This paper is based on research in progress focusing on the histories of mission hospitals in the rural communities of KwaZulu Natal, while also building on earlier research into the pluralism of medical systems within the South African Cape. Sources have been drawn from a range of historical documents, including medical and nursing journals, the archives of a number of medical missionary societies and of the Overseas Nursing Association, but the research has also been informed by oral histories of a broad cross-section of health professionals who practised in South Africa. A large literature search included a number of biographies and institutional histories. The paper will be divided into three parts--the first provides a brief background to colonialism and the early nursing history of South Africa; the second looks in more detail at the role played by missionary nurses in establishing nursing as a profession and providing training opportunities for African nurses. The final part contrasts missionary nursing with the supply of, and work done by nurses from the Overseas Nursing Association operating within their quite specific, colonial remit. This will show how the two contrasting professional spheres--one reflecting a fairly short-term commitment, the other, a much broader, 'vocational' involvement--may be seen to represent quite different colonial attitudes, and ultimately quite diverse outcomes.

[Reformation of the Medical Educational Institutes and training of general doctors during the early period of Japanese rule]

The Japanese government downgraded a Korean medical college being attached to the Daehan hospital to a medical training center blaming upon a lack of education in Korea. But the actual curriculum and the years required for completing a course of study in the Korean medical college were equivalent to those of the Japanese medical college. Furthermore, the Japanese government discarded the financial support for medical school students. So they should pay their tuitions and other stipends by themselves. The Japanese government forced a private institute to establish an endowed school by the legal act of college. It enabled to classify a medical education system with the judicial support. For the example of Severance Medical School, it reformed faculty, curriculum and facility according to the legal standard of a college act. Therefore, Severance Medical School was able to be upgraded to a medical college. But there was a limitation even for the government schools under the colonial era. It was not possible to train important medical human resource who enabled to supervise the modern medical system in Korea. On one hand, almost every important medical human resource such as a military doctor, and a professor, who should have trained in Korea in the Great Han Period, was trained in Japan. On the other hand, fostering general doctors, who practiced medicine with hands-on experience, was the purpose of medical education in Korea whether the medical school was government or private. Since the purpose of Severance Medical College was to foster general doctors, it was able to grow within the colonial medical system. The purpose of medical missionaries, who promoted the spread of gospel with the western medical support, enforced the Japanese colonial logics that the Japanese government could educate and develop Korea with the introduction of western civilization. Although it was later comparing to the government medical school. Severance Medical College enabled to certify the medical license automatically to the graduates from the school. The reason that the Japanese government allowed for Severance Medical College to issue the automatic medical license was to keep the colonial structure of Japanese in Korea.

The politics and semiotics of sounds--Mayan linguistics and nation-building in Guatemala

This paper discusses the development Mayan linguistics as an authoritative field of knowledge in Guatemala. In particular, it links missionary linguists' and Maya linguists' activities with shifting nationalist agendas from the 1920s in to the late 1980s. It is argued that during the historical and intellectual moment that linguistics becomes an authoritative epistemology, phonetic analysis functions as a creative index that constitutes "expert" knowledge for particular semiotic and ideological reasons tied to competing versions of the Guatemalan imagined community.

[William W. Cadbury and canton hospital]

William W. Cadbury M.D. was born in Philadelphia, USA and graduated from the Medical College of Pennsylvania University. It was nearly 40 years since he arrived in Canton (Guangzhou) in 1909 and left at retirement age. He taught western medicine in Canton Christian College and worked as a medical doctor in Canton Hospital, the oldest western medical hospital in the Orient. He was regarded as a famous foreign doctor and an excellent professor in internal medicine in the Republic of China. He wrote At the point of Lancet: 100 years of Canton Hospital 1835 - 1935, which recorded the achievement made by American missionary doctors, particularly the pioneers such as Peter Parker M.D. and John G. Kerr. M.D. So far the book is still an important reference for the studies on history of western medicine in China and the history of modern medical exchange between China and other countries.

The Anatomical Mission to Burma

Until the 1830s, most Americans were unfamiliar with the images of anatomy. Then a small vanguard of reformers and missionaries began to preach, at home and around the world, that an identification with the images and concepts of anatomy was a crucial part of the civilizing process. In his essay, Sappol charts the changes in the perception of self that resulted from this anatomical evangelism. Today, as anatomical images abound in the arts and the media, we still believe that anatomical images show us our inner reality.

[John Kerr and the introduction of Western medicine into China]

Being a key figure in the process of introduction of western medicine into China in modern age, John Kerr, an American medical missionary, established the Boji Hospital, one of the most influential hospitals with the longest history in modern China. He carried out medical education by setting up a medical school affiliated to the Boji Hospital, which was the first professional western medical school in China. He compiled medical books and periodicals, playing an important role in the systematic understanding of western medicine by the Chinese medical field at that period. He made contribution to the development of western medicine in China for nearly half a century.

Clerical frames for nursing practice: missionary nurses at Rehoboth

This paper presents a discourse analysis of publications of the Christian Reformed Church regarding its Rehoboth Mission near Gallup, New Mexico, among the Navajo. All issues of The Banner, Acts of Synod of the Christian Reformed Church, the Rehoboth Hospital Bulletin, and the Annual Report of the Rehoboth Mission from 1880 to the present were reviewed for references to health-care at Rehoboth from 1903 to 1943. Four religiously framed discourses were identified: discourses justifying provision of health-care at the mission, discourses of the Navajos as immature and potentially dangerous, needing to be civilized, discourses of cleanliness, and discourses of calling. This paper adds to a growing body of knowledge about religious frames within which nurses have practiced in North America.

"Practising hygiene and fighting the natives' diseases". Public and child health in German East Africa and Tanganyika territory, 1900-1960

For reasons of population policy and missionary strategies, childcare was a relatively early issue of colonial medical policy and services in East Africa. The main challenge for the adaptation of biomedicine to the local situation proved to be not so much schemes for treatment or prevention, but rather the question of staffing. Education and employment of females, as well as social acceptance and keeping up professional standards of biomedically trained personnel, posed major obstacles to the implementation of governmental health policies. In addition to these obstacles, European prejudices about African disinterest in child health contributed to the feeling that limited progress had been made after 50 years of biomedical efforts to improve African child health.

Global and local contexts: the Northern Ogoja Leprosy Scheme, Nigeria, 1945-1960

Deriving funding from missionary sources in Ireland, Britain and the USA, and from international leprosy relief organizations such as the British Empire Leprosy Relief Association (BELRA) and drawing on developing capacities in international public health under the auspices of WHO and UNICEF through the 1950s, the Roman Catholic Mission Ogoja Leprosy Scheme applied international expertise at a local level with ever-increasing success and coverage. This paper supplements the presentation of a successful leprosy control program in missionary narratives with an appreciation of how international medical politics shaped the parameters of success and the development of therapeutic understanding in the late colonial period in Nigeria.

"Essentially Christian, eminently philanthropic": the Mission to Lepers in British India

The early history of the Mission to Lepers in India is an interplay between politics, religion, and medicine in the context of British imperialism. The Mission pursued the dual but inseparable goals of evangelization and civilization, advancing not only a religious program but also a political and cultural one. These activities and their consequences were multi-faceted because while the missionaries pursued their religious calling, they also provided medical care to people and in places that the colonial government was unable or unwilling. Within the context of the British imperial program, the work imparted Western social and cultural ideals on the colonial populations they served, inculcated patients with Christian beliefs, and provided medical care to individuals who had been expelled from their own communities. Physical healing was intimately tied to religious salvation, spiritual healing, and the civilizing process.

The papers of Stanley Browne: leprologist and medical missionary (1907-1986)

This article elaborates a significant archival acquisition that supplement the collection documents related to the life and work of Stanley George Browne held at the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine in London, specifically his work in the Belgian Congo (from 1936 to 1959), at Uzuakoli in Nigeria (1959 to 1966), in London with the Leprosy Study Centre (1966-1980), and also in his international capacity as leprosy consultant. It also briefly refers to an endangered collection of documents, photographs, files and correspondence held in a small museum in Culion Sanatorium, The Philippines. This research is part of the International Leprosy Association Global Project on the History of Leprosy. Its results can be accessed at the site http://www.leprosyhistory.org