Notable Women of Modern China Part 9

Chief among the gifts which Dr. Stone received for her work while in America, was the entire sum of money needed to build another wing to the hospital. The need of this wing had been felt for years, for the hospital had become crowded as soon as it was opened. Dr. Stone's ingenuity had been taxed to the utmost to enlarge the capacity of the original buildings, by putting patients into rooms designed for far different purposes, and even part.i.tioning off sections of the halls for them. Still many whom she longed to take in had to be turned away. Many times it had seemed as if the much-needed addition were almost a reality. But the money would not be quite sufficient; or the contractors could not be secured; or prices of building material would rise and the cost would prove to be double that originally estimated; it seemed as if the wing were too elusive ever to materialize. On her return to Kiukiang work on the new wing was commenced, and it was finished the following autumn. This addition practically doubled the hospital work, and Miss Hughes wrote that Dr. Stone was in "the seventh or seventeenth heaven over it all."

At the same time that the new wing was being built, a little bungalow was erected in the hills behind the city, where children with fevers could be sent to escape the intense heat of the summer months in Kiukiang. "The Rawling Bungalow is finished and the children are all up there for the summer," Dr. Stone wrote in 1908. "I know you will be delighted at this annex to the hospital. Of course it is only a bungalow ... but it is a blessed relief to have this place to which to send the sick little ones and those who otherwise would be left to suffer here all summer."

As soon as the masons had finished their work on the new wing of the hospital they began on another new building just beside it; a home for the doctor and Miss Hughes, also a gift from friends in America. That, too, was completed by the end of 1908, and during Chinese New Year, a time when the hospital work was less pressing, Dr. Stone and Miss Hughes took a trip to Shanghai to buy furniture for it. It is easy for one who saw the doctor then to imagine the keenness with which she noticed every detail in the American hospitals, for while visiting in the homes of friends in Shanghai nothing escaped her quick eye. Miss Hughes' attention was constantly called to things that pleased the doctor's taste by her often reiterated, "Look here! We must have this in our home." "Miss Hughes and I shall try to make our home so homey," she wrote to a friend, "and we shall open it for everybody, the everyday, common folks as well as the _Tai-tais_."

The next addition to the hospital property was a home for the nurses, money for which had been pledged during Dr. Stone's stay in America. As soon as the funds were sent out building was commenced, and in March, 1909, the nurses moved into their new home. The accommodations of the hospital were thus enlarged still further, and moreover the nurses had a far more restful environment in which to spend the hours when they were off duty.

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

One who met Dr. Stone in America spoke of the great impression made upon her by the doctor's ability to do many things. The demands upon the physician in entire charge of the large Danforth Memorial Hospital are indeed many and varied, but Dr. Stone has proved equal to them all.

She is a good general pract.i.tioner. Probably the best proof of this is the number of patients who throng the hospital gates. In 1908 she reported, "Last month we saw over 1,700 people in the hospital and dispensary, and in April we saw over 1,800." A year later she wrote, "Taking the statistics for last month I found we treated 2,743 in the month of April." Her successful treatment of the most difficult diseases is all the more remarkable to one who knows the tendency of many Chinese not to consult a physician until the patient is at the point of death. Their utter lack of knowledge of the simplest rules for the care of the sick, and the dreadful surroundings in which so many of them live, produce, in those who are brought to the doctor after long weeks of suffering, conditions which are almost too terrible to describe.

The words of a fellow-missionary throw light on the difficult character of Dr. Stone's work:

"Talk of missionary work! People at home don't know the meaning of the word! Here is this plucky little woman in the midst of this awful heat--I dare not go outside of a shaded room until after the sun is down at night--treating anywhere from twenty to fifty patients in the dispensary every day, and her charity ward filled with the most trying, difficult, repulsive cases of suffering humanity. Missionary work? Why you don't even _find_ such cases as she has every day, in the hospitals of America. How the people live as long as they do--how these poor little suffering children survive until they get to the state they are in when brought to the hospital, is more than I can understand."

Dr. Edward C. Perkins, who visited Dr. Stone for several days, lays similar emphasis on the serious condition in which the doctor finds those who apply to her for treatment. "The cases which came to the dispensary were sorely in need of help. This was, I think, the invariable rule. Such cases they were as do not often come to the observance of physicians in this country, and some familiarity with the dispensaries of four of the large hospitals in New York City, has almost failed to show such need as the little doctor sees continually."

No physician in China can be a specialist. One of Dr. Stone's letters shows the variety of diseases which she is called upon to treat. "Women come to us almost dead; paralyzed, blind, and helpless.... We have in the isolation wards, measles; and in the contagious rooms, locked up, leprosy; an insane woman locked up in her room; typhoid, tuberculosis, paralyzed women and children, ulcer cases such as you would never dream of, surgical cases of all kinds, and internal cases too numerous to mention."

A letter from a Kiukiang missionary tells of one woman who came to the hospital with "not a square inch of good flesh on her entire body." Fingers and toes were so diseased as to be dropping off, and the poor woman's suffering was unspeakable. Dr. Stone put her in isolation, and taking every precaution with gloves and antiseptics, herself washed and dressed the repulsive sores, in spite of the sufferer's protests, "Oh, doctor, don't touch me. I am too filthy for your pure hands to touch." This she did every day, until, her sores completely healed, the woman was discharged from the hospital a few weeks later.

Hon. Charles M. Dow of Jamestown, N.Y., who was taking a trip around the world, met Bishop Lewis on a Yangtse-kiang steamer, and was invited by him to stop off at Kiukiang to make the acquaintance of a remarkable surgeon of that city. Great was Mr. Dow's astonishment when the surgeon appeared and proved to be "a small and very attractive native Chinese woman."

Dr. Stone is so small that she has to stand on a stool to reach her operating table; but Dr. Danforth's testimony is that she is performing the largest operations known to surgery, and that no Chicago surgeon is doing work superior to hers. Moreover she has no fellow physicians to a.s.sist her in her surgical work. The most delicate operations, for which an American surgeon would call in the a.s.sistance of brother physicians, internes, and the most expert of graduate nurses, are performed by Dr. Stone entirely unaided except for the faithful nurses whom she has herself trained. Only at rare intervals does she receive a visit from a fellow physician such as Dr. Perkins of New York, who, in an interesting account of his stay at Kiukiang, tells of performing his first major operation "in her operating room and under her direction."

At first the people were afraid to submit to operations, but the doctor's marked success with those who permitted her to operate soon overcame their fear. The results of her skilful use of the knife have been most marvellous to them. That a young woman of over twenty, who could not be betrothed because of a hare lip reaching into the nose, with a projection of the maxillary bone between the clefts, could be successfully operated on and transformed into a marriageable maiden, seemed nothing short of miraculous.

Nor was it less wonderful to them that an old woman could, by an operation, be relieved of an abdominal tumor from which she had suffered for sixteen years, and which, when removed, weighed fifty-two pounds. "The people appreciate surgery more and more," reads one of Dr. Stone's recent letters.

"A lot of the tuberculosis patients who have seen the quick results from operations want me to operate on their lungs."

Another large department of Dr. Stone's work has been the training of her nurses. This has been an absolute necessity, for, as Dr. Stone said: "When I found I had to run a hospital with accommodations for 100 beds, and an out-patient department with sometimes 120 patients a day, I at once found I had to multiply myself by training workers. These workers I selected from various Christian schools with good recommendations as to qualifications. I do not dare to take into training any one who has failed as a teacher or in any line of work, because nursing is an art still in its embryo. To succeed in this profession one must not only know how to read and write, but also know arithmetic and some English."

The course of study which Dr. Stone gives her nurses is about the same as that prescribed by the regular training schools, or hospitals, in America.

To do this she has had to translate several English text-books into Chinese for the use of her students. The reliable and efficient nurses who have completed the course and are now her trusted a.s.sistants in all her work, have amply repaid her for all the time and labour she has expended upon this part of her work.

In an article on "Hospital Economics" she speaks of the efficient service of these nurses:

"I am blessed with five consecrated young women," she says, "who have completed a course of nursing and studies with me, and I have divided the work into different departments, holding them responsible for the work and for the younger nurses under them. For instance, one of the graduates is the matron, who looks after all the housekeeping and the accounts, watching for the best market time for buying each article in connection with the diet, the best foodstuff for the money expended, and looks after each and all of the servants so that they do their work properly. Another graduate nurse looks after the dispensary, the filling of prescriptions, the weighing and compounding of medicines, and superintends the sale of drugs in that department. Another one has charge of all in-patients upstairs, and another downstairs, including private cases, with junior nurses under her. These look after the special diet, and the carrying out of orders in all the wards and the charting of records. (This is done in English.) Still another nurse has charge of the operating room, with all of the sterilization necessary for all major and minor operations, the distillation of water, and the responsibility of going out to cases with the doctor. In this way it is arranged that in case of all operations the one doctor has her a.s.sistants in the operating room, and yet does not interfere with the regular working of the hospital."

"Dr. Stone is multiplying herself many-fold by her splendid training of nurses in the Kiukiang hospital," is the verdict of Mrs. Bashford, wife of the Methodist Missionary Bishop of China. She has watched Dr. Stone's work with keen and intelligent interest, and her opinion seems to be justified by the results. When after weeks of unusual strain Dr. Stone was persuaded to take a short vacation in the mountains back of Kiukiang, her corps of fourteen nurses, five of them graduates, kept up the work of the hospital, and treated about eighty patients a day in the dispensary. Twice, in answer to telegrams, Dr. Stone returned to Kiukiang, only to find each time that everything had been done to her entire satisfaction. "Were it not for the efficient help I have from my nurses, I should not be able to manage this work at all," she says.

Doubtless one great reason for Dr. Stone's success in raising up efficient workers is her confidence in them, and her sympathetic att.i.tude toward them. "I believe many a valued worker is lost to her profession through lack of sympathy and encouragement when needed," she once said. "Surely the Lord values the workers as well as His work, and we who want our work to prosper cannot afford to ignore the interests of those upon whom we depend so largely for success."

The nurses in turn have a pride in the hospital as great as the doctor's own, and are as devoted to it. "The nurses are fine in standing up for our standard of cleanliness," Dr. Stone wrote to a fellow-physician. "For instance, when this patient came (a very poor woman) the nurses got hold of her, bathed her, and put her in our clean, white clothes and tucked her away in one of these clean white beds in no time.... She begged to keep the bandages on her bound feet. 'No,' the nurses said, 'such dirty bandages in our clean bed! No!'"

Writing to Dr. Danforth of her first graduating cla.s.s, Dr. Stone said: "You may ask if they are going to run away and earn large sums for themselves.

No, they are going to stay and help me in the hospital work, or earn money for the hospital. You see, I a.s.sign each one to a department of work, and she is the head-nurse of that department. Then by turn I send them out to do private nursing, and the sums they earn are turned into the hospital for caring for the poor who cannot help themselves. Mrs. Wong is nursing Mrs.

B---- of our own mission at Nanking, and when she comes back Miss Chang will be sent to Wuhu to nurse a lady of another mission. Dr. Barrie, of Kuling, has written to me to engage several for the new hospital at Kuling for foreigners during this summer season. I told him I could accommodate him because I have three other cla.s.ses in training.... The spirit has been most beautiful among the nurses. Many of them take their afternoon 'off duty' to do evangelistic work in the homes of patients."

The well-trained corps of nurses is one of the most convincing testimonies to that of which the whole hospital is a proof--the administrative ability of the physician in charge. No detail of a well-managed hospital, from the record files and wheel stretchers to the hand-power was.h.i.+ng machine, is neglected. Nevertheless the hospital is conducted with true economy. Dr.

Stone defines economy as "the art which avoids all waste and extravagance and applies money to the best advantage. It is not economy to buy cheap furniture that has to be replaced all the time. It is poor economy to buy cheap food and let patients suffer for lack of nourishment.... It is poor economy to use cheap drugs and drug your patient's life out. It is poor economy to use wooden beds and have to patronize Standard Oil to keep them clean. It is also poor economy not to use sheets and thin quilts, instead of the heavy comfortables the Chinese have, just in order to save the heavy was.h.i.+ng and disinfection. It is poor economy to have cheap servants who can do nothing. With trained workers to look after instruments, instead of having to depend on servants, I find instruments last longer." As a result, the universal testimony of those who visit the hospital is, "Dr. Stone has one of the finest hospitals we have ever seen."

From the outset the doctor's ideal has been to make the medical work as largely self-supporting as possible. Of course many of those most in need of medical aid could pay nothing for it, nor for their medicines, nor even, if they were in-patients, for their food. Others, however, could pay something, and still others were able to pay in full. Soon after work in the Danforth Hospital was begun, Dr. Stone wrote: "Our ordinary charge for food is sixty cash a day or two dollars per month. For private rooms they pay ten to twenty dollars, according to the kind of room they have.

Occasionally we meet some generous Chinese who give freely and thus help a great deal our poor patients, some of whom cannot even pay for their rice.

For instance, one man has paid three hundred dollars this year for his wife, who is still here for treatment, and will probably give more when she is through. Another man has given one hundred and forty dollars for his wife's treatment. Last quarter we received over four hundred dollars, and this quarter over five hundred dollars here. We are getting to have more of the well-to-do patients."

A letter written in 1905 tells of ways in which the Chinese a.s.sist the hospital financially: "It has been my privilege to minister unto many of this poor cla.s.s of people with the fees I receive from the rich. So often I find in the morning I earn a good fee, and in the evening I spend it on a very poor case. Lately I have been sending a subscription book around. I first sent it to the highest official here, and it was immediately returned with fifty dollars. It encouraged me very much, for I know the work is approved of by the officials and the common people, and they are both helping all they can." Once she reported that at a time when the financial outlook was unusually discouraging, an unknown non-Christian Chinese sent a messenger several hundred _li_ with a gift of money to relieve the situation.

Patients who cannot afford to pay anything, but who can use their hands, are given sewing to do, and in this way make some contribution toward the expenses of the work. The nurses, too, who have received training from the hospital, either give their services or the money which they receive from private cases. Thus, in various ways, many of the running expenses are met on the field, but as so much work is done for the poor, the physician's salary and the larger part of the equipment have come from friends in America.

Even in the interior of China, and in the midst of the most active of lives, Dr. Stone has never ceased to be a student. Early in her work she wrote to a friend in America who was also a physician, "We feel that in order to keep up in our profession we need occasionally some of the latest works, especially since medical science is one of the most progressive of all." Subsequent letters are full of commissions such as, "I need an English and Latin dictionary very much in the work. Will you buy one--a good one--for me?" "Will you kindly buy Hyde's work on 'Venereal Diseases,'

not on Skin, for I have that." Or "I should like very much to have a work on Hygiene. You know the Chinese have such primitive ideas on that subject, and if I can get a good standard book I can pick out and translate for the benefit of the people. Then if there is still anything left, I would like a small book on bandaging and ma.s.sage, for I want to train new nurses.

Occasionally, when you see something new and well-tested, such as articles you think will help my work, especially anything on tuberculosis, cholera, hydrophobia, etc., etc., just remember the back number in China, won't you?"

With keen recognition of the inestimable value which her scientific study and training have been to her in her work, Dr. Stone has never failed to remember the great Source of motive and power, and has ever been eager to share with her patients the joy and peace of the Christian religion. Every morning she conducts a service in the hospital chapel for the employees of the hospital, and such of the patients as are able to attend. At the same time the nurses are holding a similar service in the ward upstairs. While the dispensary patients are waiting their turn in the examining room, one or more Bible women utilize the time by telling them the truths of Christianity. Dr. Stone's own mother has done such work for years, morning after morning, among her daughter's dispensary patients.

One of the other missionaries at Kiukiang tells of going through the hospital one evening, as the nurses were getting the patients settled for the night. She noticed a low murmur which she did not at first understand, until she saw that at every bed someone was in prayer. Here a mother was kneeling by the side of her little suffering son; there another mother of high rank was praying that the life of the baby by whose crib she knelt might be spared to her. In one corner a woman had crept out of bed and was kneeling with her face to the floor; in other places those who were too sick to leave their beds were softly praying in them.

The nurses are all Christian women, able to minister to the spiritual as well as the physical. Dr. Perkins says of them: "The nurses, too, are strongly evangelistic in their thought and effort, and even to one who could not understand the language, the atmosphere of Christian harmony and the remarkable lack of friction in a place so busy and so constantly full of problems, was very noticeable."

One night Dr. Stone went into the room of a patient who had been greatly dreading a serious operation which she was to undergo the next day, to be greeted with a radiant face and the words, "Oh, doctor, I'm not afraid now of the operation. I've been talking to your G.o.d." Earlier in the evening one of the youngest of the nurses had found her crying bitterly and the old woman had told her: "I'm so afraid of the operation. You see the other woman you told me of was a Christian and of course your G.o.d helped her.

I've never wors.h.i.+pped your G.o.d. I never knew of Him before and He may not help me." "Why, you needn't cry over that!" the little nurse a.s.sured her.

"Our G.o.d doesn't blame you when no one had told you about Him. Now that you know, if you love Him and pray to Him, He will help you." Then she knelt down beside her and taught her how to pray to Him. After the operation was over and the patient, fully recovered, was going back to her village, she said to the doctor, "I am the first one in our village to hear of Jesus.

Won't you come _soon_ to my people and tell them."

Dr. Stone's letters and reports are full of accounts of the way in which, from the beginning, the work of the hospital has brought the knowledge of the Great Physician to those whose bodies had been so tenderly cared for by His followers that their hearts were very open. Whole families, sometimes almost entire communities, have become Christian as a result of the medical work. An interesting instance of the way in which the hospital's influence is spread by its patients is the case of a little girl, eight years old, who unbound her feet while in the hospital, and became so ardent an advocate of natural feet that after she had returned to the village in which she lived, she and her father succeeded in persuading three hundred families to pledge that their daughters should have natural feet.

It is quite impossible to separate Dr. Stone's definitely religious work from her medical work; for while Sunday afternoons and the chapel hour in the morning are set aside by her for purely evangelistic work, her Christian faith permeates all that she does. In the first years of her practice she did some itinerating work, but now that the work is so large and she is the only physician in charge, she has had to give that up. The nurses, however, still carry it on. "You see, while I am practically tied to the place," writes the doctor, "it gives so much happiness to be able to send out workers like these and to spread our influence. As the nurses say, they will be able to send a lot of patients back to the hospital. You see the more work we have the merrier we are."

Every time an evangelistic worker goes out on the district, one of the nurses accompanies her, and with ointments, simple medicines, bandages, vaccine, etc., treats several hundred patients in the country beyond the reach of physicians. At one time in the bitter cold weather of winter a message came from a distant village where smallpox was raging, asking that a nurse be sent to treat the sick people and vaccinate those who had not yet taken the disease. One woman in that village had once been at the hospital, and it was through her that the call came. One of the nurses at once volunteered to go, and with a Bible woman and a reliable man-servant she took the trip down the river, in a little sampan, to the smitten village. During four days she treated over one hundred patients not only in the village, but also in the region round about; for she and the Bible woman walked thirty _li_ every day to sufferers in the country. While the nurse worked, the Bible woman preached, and in this way hundreds of people heard of Christianity for the first time. As Dr. Stone says, "The cry now is not for open doors, for we have free entrance into the homes of the rich and poor. What we need now is an efficient force of trained evangelistic workers to ... follow up the seed thus sown broadcast on such receptive soil." This need the Training School for Bible Women is helping to meet.

Mrs. Stephen Baldwin writing to Dr. Danforth said, "The Lord honoured your investment by placing in it one of the most wonderful doctors in all this world." But Dr. Stone is not only a physician, but an all-round woman. "She is equal to any sudden call to speak," said one who heard her often when she was in America. A report of the Missionary Conference at Kuling, China, states that "Dr. Stone's paper on 'Hospital Economics' was the finest feature of an attractive conference." At the request of this conference she prepared a leaflet on the diet suited to Chinese schoolgirls, and a few years ago wrote a very useful book on the subject: "Until the Doctor Comes."

"I observed her in her home," writes a missionary who stopped at Kiukiang for a few days _en route_ to Peking, "a housewifely woman, thoughtful of every detail that might ensure a guest's comfort. In a single month recently she treated 1,995 women and children, yet she is not too busy to be a gracious hostess. Chinese ladies delight to visit her, and such is the influence of this modest woman that the Hsien's wife has unbound her feet."

It may well be questioned, great as are Dr. Stone's achievements, which is of more value, the actual work she is doing, or the inspiration which her efficient, self-sacrificing Christian life is bringing to the awakened womanhood of the new China. The words of Miss Howe regarding Dr. Stone and Dr. Kahn indicate their influence: "They seem to be an inspiration to the girls and women of all cla.s.ses. When our schoolgirls learn of anything 'the doctors' did when they were pupils, they seem to think they have found solid ground on which to set their feet." A letter from another fellow-worker stated that Dr. Stone was to give the address at the graduation exercises of the cla.s.s of 1909 of the Nanking Normal School for Women at which the viceroy and "other notables of China" were to be present. Dr. Stone was greatly touched when the daughter-in-law of a viceroy once said to her that she would gladly give up all her servants, her beautiful clothes, her jewels, even her position, if she could lead a useful life like hers, instead of making one of the many puppets in the long court ceremonies, with nothing to think of except her appearance, and nothing to do but kill time.

It is a great joy to the doctor to have a part in bringing about a realization of the achievements of which Chinese women are capable, and she has been willing to make any sacrifice necessary to do this. Soon after Dr.

Kahn's transfer to Nanchang had left her with almost double work, Dr.

Danforth wrote that he had found a nurse in one of the Chicago hospitals who was willing to go to China, and asked Dr. Stone what she would think of having her come to the Danforth Hospital. Dr. Stone replied that while she would take her if Dr. Danforth wished, she would really rather not, on the whole. Personally, she said, she would have been very glad to have her come, but she was eager that her work should accomplish two things which it could accomplish only if it were purely Chinese: first, that it should convince the Chinese women themselves that they are able to do things of which they have never dreamed; and, second, that it should show the people of other nations that the only reason why Chinese women have for centuries lived such narrow lives is that they have not had opportunity to develop their native powers. She feared that if an American nurse came to the hospital it would look as if the purely Chinese work had failed, and that it had been necessary to call in help from America.

Accordingly, although Dr. Stone has sometimes been forced to admit that her work has been so heavy as to tax both heart and strength to the utmost, she has carried it all these years with no help, except from the nurses she has trained. She has counted no task too hard, no labour too constant, if she may thereby benefit her countrywomen physically, intellectually, or spiritually. "She does not spare herself," one of her friends writes, "she seems unable to do so, and is too tender-hearted to turn the suffering away for her own need."

The past year has brought peculiar burdens to the doctor. She carried on her regular hospital work as usual, until the disturbances caused by the Revolution came so near that all the women and children in the schools and hospital were ordered into the foreign concession. This order came at night, and by two o'clock the next morning not a patient was left in the hospital.

Dr. Stone turned over the hospital to the revolutionary leaders, and each day she and her trained nurses cared for the injured soldiers sheltered in it. The leaders of the Revolution urged her to wear the white badge which was their emblem, but she told them that while her sympathies were with them, as a Red Cross physician she must remain neutral, that she might be able to render a.s.sistance to the wounded on both sides. Her explanation was courteously accepted, and an armed guard was furnished to escort her to and from the hospital each morning and evening.