our dispensary all exhausted, carrying a child on her back, and
another buttoned in front within her clothes. The older one was a
boy three years old and the tiny baby in her bosom was only three
months old. They proved to be her grandchildren, and the old woman
said: 'Never in our lives have we gone out to beg before, and for
the last three days we have not had a morsel to eat. Before the
floods we were considered well-to-do people, and my son is forty
years old and a literary man; so he is too ashamed to beg, but
tries to help the family by gathering sticks for the fire. His
wife is sick in bed with typhoid fever and now the baby has no one
to nurse it, and the boy is sick, and I have to take care of them
all and beg for a living.' The woman had on only a lined garment,
so we gave her one of those wadded gowns that were sent us, and a
tin of milk for the baby, and also sent a little rice to make gruel
for the sick woman at home."
This was only one of many cases of need which the hospital sought to
alleviate. A few days after Christmas of this year Dr. Stone wrote to a
friend in America: "What a busy time we had getting ready to celebrate the
joyful event! We gave a good square meal to the refugees, and let them take
home what they could not finish here. It made me feel happy to see them so
pleased, and gave us an opportunity to tell them of the greatest Gift to
mankind. Although we were so rushed that we did not even sit together to
eat our regular meals, yet we felt it was the happiest Christmas we have
ever had."
In addition to the refugees larger numbers of regular patients than ever
before were coming to the doctors for treatment. The new hospital had
hardly been opened before Miss Howe wrote, "Patients who are able to bear
their own expenses are being sent away, because the present accommodations
are already overtaxed."
Just at this time, when the doctors' growing reputation, and the increased
facilities which the new buildings afforded, were greatly enlarging both
opportunity and responsibility, the question of Dr. Kahn's going to
Nanchang to open medical work there arose. It is not surprising that at
first Dr. Stone wondered how she could spare her friend and fellow-worker,
now that the work was greater than ever before, and every indication
pointed to large growth in the future. But when she became convinced that
the opportunity at Nanchang was too great to be neglected, and that only
Dr. Kahn could meet it, she bade her God-speed and cheerfully accepted the
added burden thus laid upon her.
Left alone with the entire work in Kiukiang, Dr. Stone's hands were full
indeed, as the answer which she gave to a request for a synopsis of her
day's work shows: "We breakfast at half-past seven and then I go to the
chapel in the hospital and conduct prayers for the inmates and patients
able to attend. After prayers I make a general inspection of the hospital,
and then I teach my class of nurses. I take young native girls in their
teens and give them a thorough course of training such as they would get
in America. I translate the English books into Chinese for them, and
sometimes put the Chinese books into English too. Then I go to the
dispensary and am busy there for hours.... In the afternoons I make calls,
generally on women of rank who need my assistance and have been unable to
get to the hospital. I return home only when here seems no further work for
me that day."
So far from decreasing in number after the medical force had been lessened
by half, the stream of patients became larger than ever. A few weeks after
Dr. Kahn had gone, Dr. Stone said, in a letter to Dr. Danforth: "For a long
time I have been wanting to write to you, but have been so pressed with
work that I had to let my correspondence suffer. Now I find that I must
write to you to let you know how crowded we are already, at this season
when we generally have a scarcity of patients, as it is Chinese New Year.
Now that our work is better known we seem to draw a better class of people.
I don't mean very rich people, but the well-to-do, thrifty class, who earn
their way by labour. Just now I have to accommodate seven private patients
who are paying their own way, with only two private rooms at my disposal.
So what do you think I do? I had to put one in our linen room, one in the
sewing room, one in a bathroom, and finally, as a last resort, we had to
put one in the nurses' dining-room.... We generally have to put patients on
the floor in summer, but I am afraid we will not have enough room to
accommodate more even on the floor."
Dr. Stone's dispensary patients soon averaged a thousand a month, and as
the people's confidence grew, her surgical work also became much heavier.
In 1906 she reported: "In looking over the record for the year we realize
that we have advanced decidedly in gaining confidence with the people.
_Tai-tais_ (ladies of rank) who formerly refused operations, returned to us
for help."
Often her work kept her busy far into the night and she not infrequently
fell asleep from sheer exhaustion as she was carried home, in her sedan
chair, from some difficult case in the country. Yet her work was well done.
The tribute of a fellow-missionary was well deserved: "Dr. Stone is a tower
of strength in herself and with her trained assistants carries the large
work here nobly. She has been eminently successful in surgical cases and is
having more and more to do in this line." Another, working in a different
station, wrote, "It was my happy fortune to be the guest of another ideal
Chinese woman, Dr. Mary Stone, at Kiukiang. I saw her in her model
hospital, where every little wheel of the complicated machinery was
adjusted to perfect nicety."
As the work grew, it became evident that larger accommodations would soon
be imperative, and Dr. Stone succeeded in securing some additional land.
The first addition was a lot which she had long desired to enclose within
the hospital grounds. For some time she was unable to do this because of a
road which ran between, but in 1905 the road was moved to the other side of
the lot, at her petition, and the land was included within the hospital
compound. "Most of the neighbours have been patients and are friendly," one
of her letters reports. "When the magistrate came to see about moving the
road to the other side of the lot only one man objected. He was soon
pacified by the magistrate's remark that 'the hospital here is for the
public good, and when it is in our power to do it a service, we should
gladly do it.'" Another piece of land was purchased during the same year,
by money raised entirely from the Chinese.
The next addition greatly delighted Dr. Stone's heart. Adjoining the
hospital was a temple known as "The White Horse Temple." This was so close
to the hospital that it made one of the wards on that side damp and dark,
and, moreover, the noisy crowds of people who thronged it, and the beating
of the temple gongs, made it a most undesirable neighbour for a hospital.
Immediately after the annual meeting at which Dr. Stone had been enabled to
report the purchase of the other lots, a cablegram came from America with
the good news that $1,000 had been secured for the purchase of the temple
and the lot on which it stood. Purchasing a temple is quite sure not to be
an easy task, but in spite of many hindrances Dr. Stone succeeded in
securing the lot and in making what she gleefully termed "a real Methodist
conversion" of the temple into an isolation ward.
In 1896 Dr. Stone had landed in China and with Dr. Kahn begun medical work
in a small, rented Chinese building. In 1906 she found herself in sole
charge of a large, finely equipped hospital for women and children, with a
practice which was increasing so rapidly as to make constant additions to
the hospital property necessary.
[Illustration: General Ward of the Danforth Memorial Hospital]
III
WINNING FRIENDS IN AMERICA
In 1907, after eleven years of almost unceasing labour, during four of
which she had carried the growing work at Kiukiang entirely alone, except
for the help of the nurses whom she herself had trained, Dr. Stone
reluctantly laid down her beloved work for a few months. During the winter
of 1906 she had a severe attack of illness which she herself diagnosed as
appendicitis, and for which she directed treatment which brought her
relief. But renewed attacks finally convinced her and her friends that she
must submit to an operation if her life was to be saved. It was decided
that she should go to an American hospital, for as a fellow physician
located at another station of the mission wrote, "We all have a very high
regard for her and her work, and wanted her to get the best that could be
had." Moreover, it was a good opportunity to get her "away from China for a
much-needed change and rest."
Accordingly Dr. Stone, accompanied by her friend, Miss Hughes of the
Kiukiang mission, sailed from Shanghai, February 9. President Roosevelt,
who was acquainted with her work and knew of her serious condition, had a
telegram sent to the Commissioner of Immigration at San Francisco, giving
instructions that the Chinese physician be admitted with no delay or nerve
strain. She was therefore passed at once, with all consideration and all
possible help.
From San Francisco Dr. Stone went straight to the Wesleyan Hospital in
Chicago, that she might be under Dr. Danforth's care. The operation was
entirely successful, and early in April, less than a month after reaching
America, she was sufficiently recovered to take the trip to Miss Hughes'
home in New Jersey, where she was to rest for a few weeks.
Complete rest, however, was an impossibility to Dr. Stone, even during her
convalescence, so long as there was any service she could render. Two weeks
after her arrival Miss Hughes wrote Dr. Danforth that "our little doctor"
was accompanying her to several of the meetings which she was addressing,
and was "making friends right and left for her work." Boxes of instruments,
pillows, and spreads for the hospital beds, a baby organ for the hospital,
the support of a nurse, and other useful things were being promised by
these new friends. "Her smiling face, with no word from her even, is a
wonderful revelation to people who judge the Chinese by the putty-faced
laundrymen, the only specimen of China they have ever seen," said Miss
Hughes. Dr. Stone spent the month of May in New York, attending lectures
and clinics in the hospitals there. As she was starting for Chicago at the
end of May, she wrote Dr. Danforth:
"Do you think I shall be able to see much clinic in two weeks? That
is the only time allotted me, and my only hope is that you will be
the 'master of the situation,' and help me to spend every minute to
the best advantage.... I have attended as much clinic as I possibly
could this month, but it is awfully hard to get around in New York.
Do you suppose I would be able to go directly to Wesley Hospital
Monday, and do you think Dr. J---- would have the time and the
interest to show me the inside methods of the hospital? He wrote me
a most kind letter and invited me to do so.... Two weeks will mean
a lot if I can be right in the inside track of things. I want some
time on the eye and ear work, besides a few clinics on dermatology.
I know two weeks will not be enough for the much I want to see and
know, but since it is the only time I am to have, I know you will
help me to make the most of it."
Thus did the indefatigable little doctor take the "much-needed rest" of
which her friends in China had written. That she did make the most of her
two weeks is testified to by Mrs. Danforth, who visited many of the
hospitals with her, and who says: "In visiting the hospitals she never
missed a thing. She saw everything--nothing escaped her notice, not even
the laundries. She was always keenly alert for every idea that would
improve her hospital."
On her way back to the East, Dr. Stone stopped at Ann Arbor, for she was
eager to revisit her "dear old campus," and the faculty under whom she had
taken her medical work. "We had a lovely time in Ann Arbor," she said in
writing to a friend. "Dr. Breakey, in whose home we stayed, arranged a
meeting, or reception, where I saw most of my old professors. Then in the
parsonage we met all the ladies of our church. Next day I had a meeting in
the church."
The next few months were filled with almost incessant labour, chiefly
speaking and making friends for her work. The cordial responses which she
met everywhere never became an old story to Dr. Stone and her letters are
full of enthusiastic accounts of them. "Here at Silver Bay, a society wants
to support a missionary and we hope to find the missionary to-night. The
first was yesterday's work and the second we hope to gain to-day." Again,
"Last night on the car we met a gentleman whom I know through my sister
Anna, and after a few minutes' talk he wants to give me his camera, 5x7,
for hospital work. Isn't that splendid?" Or, "This morning we went into a
flower-seed store and what do you suppose the proprietor did but to give us
the seeds, a big list of all kinds we wanted, and then offered to add a few
more varieties. We are having lots of fun here."
Dr. Stone met with no less enthusiasm in public meetings than in her
contact with individuals. One of her hostesses tells of her remarkable
success in arousing genuine interest in her work: "She spoke at churches
very often while she was with us, and not once did she fail to get what she
asked for. She did not ask for things in general but for definite
things,--pillows for the beds, lamps for the gateway, etc. She is
irresistible."
The same friend tells of the glee with which Dr. Stone, whose English is
perfect, delighted to learn modern slang phrases. After practising them in
the bosom of the family she would sometimes innocently introduce them into
her addresses, invariably bringing down the house thereby. At one meeting,
after telling a most remarkable story, she remarked, "You may think this is
a whopper, but it is true!"
Reports of the meetings at which she spoke contain such items as this: "The
pastor of St. James Church offered to duplicate all money given in the
collection when Miss Hughes and Dr. Stone spoke. Six hundred and eighty-two
dollars was the result. A gentleman present offered one hundred dollars for
a speech from Dr. Stone in his church. The speech was made and one hundred
and eighty-two dollars put in the treasury." Other items read: "At the
district meeting a new auxiliary came into being in ---- Church. No one
could resist Dr. Mary Stone's persuasive tones as she went up and down the
aisles asking, 'Won't you join?' She told the people how much she needed a
pump in Kiukiang and forthwith the pump materialized." The _New York
Herald_ gave a long and enthusiastic report of her work, ending with the
words: "'Am I not fortunate? And I am so grateful to be able to help a
little!' is the modest way she sums up a work of magnitude sufficient to
keep a corps of medical men busily employed."
Everywhere this little Chinese woman made friends. The words of one of her
hostesses are emphatic: "She was in our home for a month, and she is one of
the most attractive women of any race I have ever met. She is so charming
that she wins her way everywhere." "She is so gracious and cordial," said
another. "She came into our family just as a member of it. I was not very
well at the time and she gave me massage every night. Her whole life and
her whole interest is in doing for others. And the wonderful thing about
her is her ability to do so much." "No missionary that we have is more
greatly loved," is the verdict of another.
Dr. Stone greatly enjoyed her stay in America. "Dr. Danforth called my
appendix 'that blamed thing,'" she said. "I call it that blessed thing,
because it brought me to this country and people have been so kind to me."
But she was eager to return to Kiukiang, and early in September was on her
way back to China, rejoicing in renewed health and new friends for her
work, and in the many gifts which were going to make that work more
efficient.
IV
A VERSATILE WOMAN
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
partitioning 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.
[Illustration: 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 practitioner. 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 assist her
in her surgical work. The most delicate operations, for which an American
surgeon would call in the assistance 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."