Doctors of Another Calling by David K. C. Cooper

Author:David K. C. Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
Published: 2012-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

Medical Education

After just two years at the Victoria School, Sun needed to earn a living and decided to study medicine, a respectable profession in China. He was directed to Dr. Kerr, an American Presbyterian missionary doctor who had built up an excellent hospital in Guangzhou and had been giving medical instruction to small numbers of Chinese. Sun Yat-sen was taken on as a medical student, defraying expenses by working in the hospital. There he reunited with his childhood friend, Lu Hao-dong, and befriended a third student, Zheng Shiliang. All three had political leanings, were discouraged by China’s backward slide, and discussed intensely the need for change, even revolution. Zheng was already a member of a secret society known as the Triads, an old society opposed to the Qing monarchy, as the Manchu rule was called, but heavily associated with organized crime.

In 1887 a new medical school opened in Hong Kong, financed by a wealthy Chinese, Ho Kai. The dean was Patrick Manson (the “father” of tropical medicine), and the chief physician was Dr. James Cantlie. Somehow Sun acquired sufficient funds and was actually the first student to enroll in the new school. Sun and Cantlie developed a firm friendship that was later to prove lifesaving for Sun. Once again Sun filled his spare time pondering China’s problems in intense discussions with a small group of like-minded students (four in all, nicknamed the “four great bandits”). He kept at his studies, though, and graduated at the top of his class in 1892.

Unfortunately, the medical education he received did not meet British licensing standards, and he could practice in Hong Kong only as a traditional Chinese doctor. He traveled to Macao where he practiced surgery at a local hospital, but the enforcement of a regulation requiring a Portuguese medical diploma forced his departure from there as well. He briefly set up a practice and opened an apothecary shop, the East-West Apothecary, in Guangzhou. Business was slow, however, and in 1894, a discouraged Sun gave medicine up for good. His mind had turned to other interests.

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