On a summer day at twilight in 2009, I sat with William Schneider at a coffee shop in Budapest during the Twenty-third International Congress of History of Science, Technology, and Medicine discussing the state of historical research on the global spread and exchange of modern medical technology. We agreed that there remains much work to do researching the history of medicine in modern China, and especially that there are many primary sources, hospital reports, and medical journals that have not been fully explored and utilized. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, medical missionaries practiced Western medicine in China and became important disseminators and practitioners. In the process, they left behind plentiful historical documentary sources—correspondence, diaries, and official reports—scattered in the libraries and archives of, among others, Chinese, American, British, and Canadian churches, universities, and hospitals. All of these, we agreed, should be systematically organized and completely researched, so we proposed collaborating to apply for a research grant that would address these lacunae.

On the strength of Bill Schneider’s great efforts, the grant proposal gained the active support of the Luce Foundation, which first agreed to support preliminary research in order to prepare for the formal beginning of the project. On October 28–29, 2010, Peking University Medical History Center and Indiana University Philanthropy Center held an academic discussion conference called “Western Medicine and Philanthropy in China: History and Archive.” Schneider and I each introduced a tentative overall plan and important research content for the project, while Martha Smalley introduced archival documents from Yale University Divinity School’s library and archives collections about the missionary medical schools and universities in China; Xu Jinhua introduced the collections at the Shanghai Xujiahui Library that included documents on foreign medicine; Dang Yuewu introduced an outline of the complete collections of West China Union University Medical School, located at Sichuan University Archives; Zhang Xia and an American representative of the Chinese Medical Board introduced Peking Union Medical College and its associated records at the Rockefeller Archive Center; and Peng Jianping presented on the condition of collections at Sun Yat-sen University Medical School’s Historical Archives. In addition, conference attendees presented reports on Suzhou’s Boxi Hospital, Beihai’s Pokhai (Puren) Hospital, Guilin’s Daosheng Hospital, and the early history and archives of several other Christian hospitals.