2 Seeking Souls through the Eyes of the Blind: The Birth of the Medical Missionary Society in Nineteenth-Century China Michael C. Lazich 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. The Protestant missionary movement that emerged from the high tide of European and American evangelicalism in the late-eighteenth and early- nineteenth centuries played a key role in the development of modern Sino- Western relations. Unlike the merchants and traders who preceded them, the earliest Protestant missionaries to China were determined to penetrate the cultural and political barriers that isolated Chinese society from the Western world. Among the most effective strategies employed by these missionaries was the establishment of small hospitals and dispensaries. In bringing the benefits of Western medical science to the Chinese, missionaries were provided with a means of social intercourse with the common people – an opportunity that was otherwise denied them by the various restrictions of the Chinese government. Encouraged by the initial success of such enterprises, a group of merchants and missionaries established the Medical Missionary Society in 1838 to promote and oversee the work of missionary physicians in China. This essay will examine the birth and early achievements of the Medical Missionary Society in the context of the period 59 Michael C. Lazich immediately prior to the Opium War, when most Western trade and contact with the Chinese was confined to the southern port city of Canton. The ‘Canton system’ and the Protestant missionary enterprise in China Although Western merchants had carried on trade with China since the mid- sixteenth century, the Chinese Imperial Government had strictly limited the range of their commercial activities. The presence of foreigners in China had historically represented a threat to the ruling dynasty to which the Chinese authorities normally responded by restricting contact between such outsiders and the general population. Since 1760, for example, the ruling Qing dynasty had confined its trade with most Westerners to the southern port city of Canton located a short distance up the West River in Guangdong Province. The only major exception to this arrangement was the Portuguese centre of trade at Macao, located not far from Canton on the western edge of the river estuary. Foreigners doing business in Canton were restricted to a block of Western-style buildings along the river outside the southwest corner of the city walls. These ‘factories’, as they were called, served as the offices and residences of Western traders while they carried out their transactions with the various Hong merchants (hang or hong means business firm) that comprised the Cohong, a merchant guild supervised by a Court-appointed chief official called the Hoppo. A list of ‘Eight Regulations,’ dating from 1760 and subsequently reconfirmed by an edict of the Jiaqing Emperor in 1819, restricted the foreigners to a narrowly prescribed range of activity with the intention of limiting the impact of their presence on the population of the city. Among other things, these regulations prohibited the foreigners from entering the city of Canton, or from otherwise wandering from the confines of the factories.1 Although Catholic missionaries had established a limited presence in China since their arrival with Portuguese traders in the late-sixteenth century, Protestant missionaries did not appear until 1807, when Robert Morrison of the London Missionary Society discreetly established a mission in Canton by connecting himself with the British East India Company. Laboring virtually alone for over twenty years, Morrison was finally joined in 1830 by Elijah Coleman Bridgman of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. These two men quickly developed a warm camaraderie as they attempted to expand their understanding of Chinese culture and acquire the language skills necessary for establishing a secure foundation for an expanded China mission. Morrison, naturally, had a significant head start in this process and served as a mentor to his devout and energetic younger colleague from America. 60.