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Healing and Evangelism: The Place of Medicine in Later Victorian Protestant Missionary Thinking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

C. Peter Williams
C. Peter Williams*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Bristol
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Extract

The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a radical change in the attitude of missionary societies to medicine as an aid to evangelism. For the first fifty or sixty years of the century the talents of the medical doctor were seldom sought and, when they were, it was most often to provide protection for missionaries in areas of particular health hazard. In 1852 it was calculated that there were only thirteen European medical missionaries, and in the period 1851-70 the Church Missionary Society (CMS) recruited seven doctors out of a total of three hundred and seven new missionaries. Suitably qualified applicants were not encouraged. In 1842 the CMS informed a surgeon of their willingness to employ him as a catechist on the clear understanding that medicine ‘was only to be an occasional occupation’. James Henderson, an Edinburgh trained doctor, could find no openings as a medical missionary in 1858. In 1861 Henry Venn, the CMS secretary, told an applicant, who was contemplating medical training, that it was inadvisable to devote time to medicine or surgery because when a candidate ‘attempts to qualify himself by medical studies, it very seldom answers any good purpose’. As late as 1875, J. K. Mackenzie, MRCS (London) and LRCP (Edinburgh), applied to the London Missionary Society (LMS) and ‘was treated altogether ... as if I had come up to ask for a special favour, or a situation, at their hands’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 19: The Church and Healing , 1982 , pp. 271 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1982

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References

1 Particular reference is made to the C[hurch] Missionary] S[ociety](MS, London CMS); the L[ondon] M[issionary] S[ociety] (MS, London, S[chool of] O[riental and] A[frican] S[tudies], Archives of the Council for World Mission); the W[esleyan] M[ethodist] M[issionary] S[ociety] (MS, London, SOAS, Archives of the Methodist Missionary Society) and the C[hina] I[nland] M[ission] (MS, Sevenoaks, Overseas Missionary Fellowship).

2 Lowe, [John], [Medical Missions: Their Place and Power] (London 1886) p 204.Google Scholar

3 Williams, [C. P.], [‘The Recruitment and Training of Overseas Missionaries in England between 1850 and 1900’] (University of Bristol MLitt 1976,) table 1.Google Scholar

4 CMS, G/AC 1/9, pp 78-9, 25 February 1851, Venn to the Rev. J. Garwood.

5 Memorials of James Henderson, M.D. (London 1867) p 62.

6 CMS, G/AC 1/15, p 79, 21 February 1861, Venn to an anonymous correspondent.

7 Bryson, M.I., John Kenneth Mackenzie; Medical Missionary to China (London 1891) p 28.Google Scholar

8 CMS, G/AC 1/9, p 302, 11 December 1851, Venn to an anonymous correspondent. Venn was in fact writing about a proposal to give all missionaries some medical training but the quotation well reflects his sceptical attitude towards medicine. When James Fitzjames Stephen suggested that he might become a doctor wrote Venn: ‘There is a providential obstacle to your becoming a doctor & you have not humbug enough’: quoted in Shenk, Wilbert, ‘Henry Venn as Missionary Theorist and Administrator’ (University of Aberdeen PhD 1978) p 207.Google Scholar

9 Piggin, F. S., ‘The Social Background, Motivation and Training of British Protestant Missionaries to India, 1789-1858’ (University of London PhD 1974) p 29.Google Scholar

10 Ibid p 31.

11 Ecumenical Missionary Conference, New York 1900, 2 vols (London 1900) 2, p 199.

12 Williams table 1.

13 Reader, [W. J.], [Professional Men: The Rise of the Professional Classes in Nineteenth Century England] (London 1966) pp 68, 146-7.Google Scholar

14 Ibid pp 66-8.

15 Wagner, [Gillian], [Bamardo] (London 1979) p 110.Google Scholar

16 Reader p 157.

17 Stock, [E.], [The History of the Church Missionary Society: Its Environment, Its Men and Its Work] 3 vols (London 1899) 3, p 321 Google Scholar, italics mine, cp p 797.

18 CMS, C/AC 2/2, p 469, 3 April 1875, Wright to Canon Tristram.

19 CMS, Register of Missionaries (Clerical, Lay and Female) and Native Clergy, from 1804 to 1904, (private circulation, n.d.) nos 815, 835, 856.

20 CMS, G/C 1, vol 55, p730, 3November 1891, C[ommittee of] Correspondence] M[inutes], cp Lowe pp 170-4.

21 Lectures [on Medical Missions: Delivered at the Instance of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society] (Edinburgh 1849) p 115.

22 Ibid p 116.

23 [Conference on Missions Held in i860 at] Liverpool (London 1860) p 57.

24 Church Missionary Intelligencer, n.s. 9 (1884) p 315.

25 CIM, from notes of conversation between Hudson Taylor and his son, and biographer, Howard, on the way to China in 1894.

26 Guinness, Joy, Mrs Howard Taylor: Her Web of Time (2nd ed London 1950) p 63.Google Scholar

27 CMS, G/C 1, vol 50, pp 378-9, 7 July 1885, CCM, cp Garlick, [P. L.], [The Wholeness of Man: A Study in the History of Healing] (London 1943) p 138.Google Scholar

28 CMS, G/C 1, vol 55, p 730,3 November 1891, CCM. Though the CMS officially remained reluctant, it had opened the door to the medical missionary and his importance increased dramatically through the nineties (cp Williams, p 278).

29 Liverpool p 160.

30 Ibid p 161.

31 Ibid p 160.

32 Binfield, Clyde, George Williams and the YMCA: A Study in Victorian Social Attitudes (London 1973) p 237.Google Scholar

33 CpKent, John, Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism (London 1978) pp 203-4.Google Scholar

34 Wagner p 40.

35 Guinness, Geraldine, The Story of the China Inland Mission, 2 vols (London 1893-4) 2, p 433.Google Scholar

36 Ibid 2, p 435.

37 Tatlow, Tissington, The Story of the Student Christian Movement of Great Britain and Ireland (London 1933) p 42.Google Scholar

38 Williams pp 192-9.

39 Slater, T. E., The Philosophy of Missions (London 1882) p 31.Google Scholar

40 Ibid p 41.

41 Ibid p 90, cp p 71.

42 Williams p 197.

43 LMS, box 13, no 11, 15 January 1896, application form of A. D. Peill.

44 Proceedings of the Conference on Foreign Missions, Held at the Conference Hall, in Mildmay Park, London, in October 1878, ed by the secretaries to the conference (London 1879) p 413.

45 Johnston, [James], [ed, Report of the Centenary Conference on the Protestant Missions of the World, London 1888,] 2 vols (London 1889) 1, p 389.Google Scholar

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47 Quoted in Richter, M., The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green and His Age (London 1964) p 29.Google Scholar

48 Ibid p 30.

49 Stock 2 p 574; 3 pp 309, 320-1; Garlick pp 137-8.

50 Johnston 1, p 389.

51 CMS, G/C 1, vol 50, pp 378-9, 7 July 1885, CCM.

52 Wilberforce, William quoted in Howse, E. M., Saints in Politics: The ‘Clapham Sect’ and the Growth of Freedom (London 1953) p 129.Google Scholar

53 WMMS, M/OM, the agreement between Langley and the secretaries is undated but occurs in the secretaries’ minutes between 9 June 1876 and 13 October 1876.

54 Dale, A. W. W., The Life of R. W. Dale of Birmingham (London 1898) p 349.Google Scholar

55 Ibid pp 398-9.

58 Lectures pp 42-3.

57 Ibid p 261.

58 Lowe p 20.

59 Ibid pp 10-11.

60 Johnston 2, p 104.

61 Ibid p 105.

62 Ibid p l04.

63 LMS, box 16 no 29, 12 June 1888, application form of J. C. Thompson.

64 Lowe p 35.

65 LMS, home office, box 12, folder 11, jacket A, 24 September 1874, letter from T. Bryson to Mr. Whitehouse quoting Lowe to the effect that a request for an ordained medical doctor raised great difficulties because of the length of the course and because of ‘the objections of some otherwise able and earnest medical men to be ordained at all’.

66 Lowe p 36.

67 CMS, P[roceedings of the] C[hurch] M[issionary] S[ociety] (1894) p 279; LMS, box 11, book 14, pp 16-17, 9June 1896, Examination Committee Minutes.

68 Macdonald, Margaret, Roderick Macdonald, M.D.: A Servant of Jesus Christ (London n.d.) p 28.Google Scholar

69 Williams table 3 - only 2 male doctors were sent out in the period 1891-1900.

70 C. P. Williams, ‘“Not Quite Gentlemen”: An Examination of “Middling Class” Protestant Missionaries from Britain, c.1850-1900’, JEH 31 (1980) pp 311-315.

71 Lectures p 55.

72 LMS, box 14, no 19, 15 March 1894, application form of E. Curwen.

73 CMS, G/C S 2, pp 152-3, 6 November 1895, Minutes of the Sub-Committee on the Medical Training of Certain Candidates for Medical Missionary Work on the Foreign Field, cp G/C 1, vol 60, p 105, 3 December 1895, CCM and p 124, 10 December 1895, General Committee Minutes.

74 CMS, PCMS, 1898, p 30.

75 LMS, Report of the London Missionary Society, 1899, p 10.