Thesis (M.A.). / Written for the Dept. of History. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/01/14). Includes bibliographical references.

Research project (M.A.B.S.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 1984. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-74).

This dissertation explores the transmission of Western medicine for women in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China. It starts from the fundamental presupposition that one cannot reach a proper understanding of the medical knowledge available at the time without investigating the practical experience of doctors, medical students, and their female patients. Focusing on the practice of Western and Chinese missionary practitioners (male and female), including the hospital buildings they erected, the texts they translated, the ways they manipulated their senses in diagnosis and treatment, and the medical appliances they employed for surgery and delivery, I reconstruct these people’s daily-life experiences, while reassessing the broad issues of professionalization and gender, colonial medicine, translation, knowledge making, and interactions between the human body and inanimate materials in a cross-cultural context. This dissertation first highlights daily life’s contributions to the history of professionalization by examining the on-the-ground, material circumstances of women doctors’ work at the Hackett Medical Complex in the southeast treaty-port city of Canton (Guangzhou). The physical conditions of the missionary hospital and its built environment embodied the multi-layered process through which the concrete elements of Western medicine were circulated, applied, and localized in China’s pluralistic medical landscape. Foregrounding Western missionary physicians and their Chinese students as practitioners who were practicing and learning medicine in a specific medical setting, I argue that the professionalization of medicine for women was not defined through a set of abstract theoretical criteria but was rather embedded in concrete daily practice, in observing, diagnosing, and treating patients. Drawing evidence from translated medical treatises and manuals, I demonstrate in the second part of the dissertation (Chapter Two) how craft-based, material-centered medical knowledge from the West was disseminated in China via the vehicle of words. Missionary doctors integrated the topic of manual skills into their medical discourse and, hence, could monopolize the realm of pragmatic knowledge generated exclusively from the hospital setting. Here, I underline the role that text played in mobilizing female healing techniques. By doing so, I show how Western-trained physician-translators derived their authority not only as practitioners of women’s reproductive health but also as interpreters of female bodies. Whereas published words served as a powerful vehicle in spreading speculative ideas, it was not the only channel through which Western medical knowledge was transmitted and acquired. Rather, an account of doctor–patient encounters at the Hackett Medical Complex clarifies the non-discursive modes of knowledge exchange that prioritized the interactions of skills, body, and instruments in translating technical know-how. As I show in this dissertation’s third part (Chapters Three and Four), missionaries created their new norms of medical practice by placing touching and handling at the center of diagnostic practice. Moreover, the apprenticeship approach and potential linguistic barrier between the missionary teachers and their Chinese students meant that a large body of knowledge passed from one to the other more by observation and imitation than by the study of books. Whereas most scholars in this field have characterized the Chinese encounter with Western science as a translation practice relying on texts, I broaden this assessment by exploring a gendered mode of knowing that emphasizes the role of clinical practice and sensory experience. My fundamental aim in this dissertation is to foreground knowledge transmission and the nature of the women doctors’ work at the level of practice, which was based mostly on their experiences and bodily labor. By focusing this history of profession-in-the-making in the multifarious exchanges between China and the West, I demonstrate how the “expertise” in women’s medicine was generated by doing—that is, by the technical dimension of the social practice of medicine.

Altruism is an imperative for nursing practice and education, but no research has explored its meaning using a historical method. This study aimed to explicate the meaning of altruism through the study of four Southern Baptist nurse missionaries. Ruth Kersey, Amanda Tinkle, Hazel Moon, and Helen Masters served in Nigeria between 1920 and 1981. Their correspondence archives were used as primary sources of data and analyzed for examples of altruism. These women founded orphanages and leprosy treatment programs, and managed clinics and hospitals run by the Southern Baptist Church in Nigeria. Additional interconnected variables of race, gender, and religion were also found to influence their work. The findings of this study supported altruism as a sacrificial behavior motivated by benefiting others. Nursing’s presence in global health, its expansion in leadership, and its future identity are supported by the study of these four nurses. Further research into the work of nurse missionaries in nursing’s past is recommended to increase the understanding of missionary work and altruism.

This is the first systematic account of early mission medical activities in the Malawi Region (comprising present day Malawi, north eastern Zambia and the eastern shore of Lake Malawi). It compares the policies and practices of three missions - Livingstonia, Blantyre and the UMCA - between 1875 and 1914, from pioneering medical provision through to the establishment of hospitals and participation in largescale public health campaigns. The study acknowledges Megan Vaughan's important analysis of the discourse of missionary medicine, but suggests the need to reflect the different religious and professional influences informing the practice of individual mission doctors. The study further suggests that the organisation and professionalising of medicine within the three missions, from 1900, was dependent upon the activities of those doctors who prioritised their professional rather than their evangelising roles. The study also considers the important contribution of missionary nursing personnel and African medical assistants in delivering both hospital and out-patient services, and identifies the professional, gender and racial factors which influenced their status and roles. The study also considers, as far as sources allow, the African patient's experience of missionary medical services. In particular, it identifies the key role of referring agents, such as African medical assistants and European employers, in directing African patients to mission medical services. It suggests that, in contrast to the conflict in belief systems presented by the mission medical discourse, Western medicine was incorporated alongside indigenous treatments within a plurality of healing systems. Finally, the study assesses the impact of missionary medical provision within the Malawi region up to 1914. It demonstrates that, during the period of this study, the Blantyre, UMCA and Livingstonia missions remained the principal sources of both curative and palliative Western medicine for the African sick, contributing towards the wider development of the missions and the European settler economy.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 541-552).