Seeking souls through the eyes of the blind: The birth of the Medical Missionary Society in nineteenth-century China

The establishment of small hospitals and dispensaries was among the most effective strategies employed by the earliest Protestant missionaries to China. Encouraged by the initial success of such enterprises, yet aware of the need for an administrative apparatus to facilitate their operation, a group of merchants and missionaries established the Medical Missionary Society in 1838 to promote and oversee the work of missionary physicians. This chapter examines the birth and early achievements of the Medical Missionary Society in the context of the period immediately prior to the Opium War, when most Western trade and contact with the Chinese was confined to the southern port city of Canton.