Description

WONG Fun [Huang Kuan, 黄宽] (1828 – 1878).

Hong Kong: Printed at the China Mail Office, MDCCCLIX [1859].

 

In the wake of the First Opium War (1839-42), China was suddenly opened to widespread Western influence, one of the main aspects of which was the establishment of Christian missionary stations across the country. Previously, only the area of Guangdong between Macau and Canton (Guangzhou) had been open to European agency.

The London Missionary Society (LMS), a Protestant proselytization organization, took the lead in in this crusade, developing a sophisticated strategy to win minds and souls and to serve their educational and medical needs. The greatest legacy of these missionary activities was the cross-cultural intellectual exchange it created between Western and Chinese cultures, which had profound and enduring socio-political and economic consequences.

A key institution underpinning the Western missionary and intellectual presence in China was the Kum-lee-Fow Hospital (sometimes Kanl-li-Fau) which was founded, in April 1848, in the western outskirts of Canton (Guangzhou), by the LMS medical missionary Dr. Benjamin Hobson. Working in close collaboration with other missionary hospitals in the country, Kum-lee-Fow was responsible for introducing several cutting-edge European medical procedures and treatments to China, which had a strong impact upon legitimizing Western medicine in the country and improving public health.

Albeit against great challenges, the Kum-lee-Fow Hospital thrived until 1856, when the outbreak of the Second Opium War forced it to cease operation. The premises was abandoned and essentially sacked, requiring it to be completely reestablished upon the end of hostilities.

The man responsible for rebuilding the Kum-lee-Fow Hospital was one of the most extraordinary figures of his age.

Enter Dr. Wong Fun: The First Western-Trained Chinese Medical Doctor

Wong Fun (Huang Kuan, 黄宽) [aka Wong Cheuk Hing (绰卿)] (1828 – 1878) was an extraordinary figure who has the distinction of being the first Western-trained Chinese medical doctor.

Wong was born in Xiangshan (today’s Zhuhai, Guangdong), located near Macau, in an area that had been exposed to Western influences for centuries. Around 1840, he started attending the Morrison Education Society School at Hong Kong, which was fondued in 1835 to commentate the late Robert Morrison, the pioneer of the London Missionary Society’s activities in China.
In 1847, Wong, along with two other Chinese students, Yung Wing (容闳) (1828 – 1912) and Wong Shing (Huang Sheng, 黄胜) (1827 – 1902) were given missionary scholarships to become the first Chinese to ever study in the United States. In 1850, Wong Fun graduated in literature from Monson Academy, Massachusetts.
Wong was then given a scholarship to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, then perhaps the world leader in that discipline. The university was also on the vanguard of training medical missionaries serving in Asia and Africa, programmes which were funded by the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society (EMMS), established in 1841.

Wong, who commenced his studied in Edinburgh in 1851, took courses on anatomy, chemistry, theory of medicine, material medical, surgery, practice of physic, midwifery, botany, pathology, practical anatomy, natural history, clinical surgery, military surgery, practical chemistry and practical pharmacy.

Wong was a stellar, prize-winning student who, in 1855, graduated upon producing his thesis, ‘On Functional Disorders of the Stomach’, at which point he became the first Western-educated Chinese physician.

Upon his graduation, the university stated:
The high station which Dr. Wong Fun has won for himself among you as a most meritorious and modest student, and the high prizes and honours which has carried off, when he descended with you into the arena of competition in the classroom, afford us every hope that he, the first Chinese, I believe, who has ever graduated at a European University, will form, among his countrymen, a most able representative of the medical arts and sciences of the Western World.

I am sure that all of us, professors and graduates, do feel an additional interest in his future career and welfare, seeing that he returns to his own distant home, not as a physician merely, but also, I believe, as a Christian Medical Missionary.

In 1856, after a residency at the New Surgical Hospital, Edinburgh, Wong was selected to return to China as a medical missionary.

Arriving in Hong Kong in January 1857, he opened a dispensary in that city later that year.

In the Spring of 1858, Wong Fun was appointed to reestablish the Kum-lee-Fow Hospital in suburban Canton. This was a great leap forward, as it marked the first time that a Chinese person had been appointed as to lead a major LMS institution.

Wong Fun acted with amazing energy, rebuilding the hospital’s sacked premises and reengaging staff to ensure that it returned to operation in short order. There he oversaw many important procedures and public health initiatives that won him renown across China. During the same period, he also assisted his esteemed colleague, Dr. John Glasgow Kerr, at the nearby Canton Missionary (Pok Tsai) Hospital, where he performed the first embryotomy in China.

Towards the end of 1860, Wong Fun left the Kum-lee-Fow Hospital to serve as the medical adviser to Viceroy Li Hongzhang of Guangdong Province. Importantly, this showed how Wong and his medical missionary colleague’s efforts had succeeded in legitimizing the place of Western medicine in China. Wong also served as the first Chinese Customs Medical Officer, with responsibility for the district of Canton.

While his government duties were rewarding, Wong Fun was eager to return to frontline practice and, in 1862, resigned his public offices to work at the Canton Missionary Hospital. From that base, in 1866, he became one of the founders of a new medical school (later called South China Medical College), whereupon he was a professor of anatomy, physiology and surgery. He built an enduring legacy in that he trained the next generation of Chinese doctors, while his work had a revolutionary effect upon improving medical knowledge and public health across China.

Sadly, in 1878, Wong Fun died, supposedly of cancer. He was remembered as “one of the ablest surgeons east of the Cape of Good Hope” and “was highly respected and honoured by Chinese and foreigners for his Christian character and the purity of his life”.

The Present Work in Focus

Present here is seemingly the only known surviving example of the first printing of the first published work by the first Western-trained Chinese medical doctor. This being Wong Fun’s Report of the Missionary Hospital at Kum-lee Fow, in the Western Suburbs of Canton, for the year 1858-59, printed in Hong Kong by the office of The China Mail newspaper.

Wong Fun’s report represents a revival of an annual series of such works that had hitherto been written by Benjamin Hobson, covering the first period of the Kum-lee-Fow Hospital’s operations, from 1848 to 1856, prior to its closure during the Second Opium War. Hobson’s reports were initially printed in Canton.

Wong Fun wrote only this single annual report, which seems to be his only separately published work.

Inside the front cover it is noted that “Dr. Wong Foon, the London Missionary Society’s Agent, has been assisted during the Year in the management of the Hospital by Rev. Josiah Cox, of the Wesleyan Missionary Society”.

The text commences with a brief history of the hospital from its founding until 1856 “noting the interesting Reports published by Dr. Hobson” (p. 1).

Wong then discusses the circumstances surrounding the rebirth of the institution, writing that during the Second Opium War “The old hospital, however, had been ransacked by pillagers. Windows, doors, partitions, floors, almost everything that could be removed, had been carried away”. After the conflict “It was deemed advisable to open a dispensary” at a house elsewhere in Canton, whereupon:

ourselves of this, and at once commenced the necessary repairs. These were completed in a short time, and the old hospital was re-opened on 31st May1859 [sic, 1858]”.
However, the revived hospital was soon engulfed in the renewed unrest that benighted Canton, such that it was forced to close for the summer of 1858. Fortunately, after the turmoil as over, it was pleasing surprise to find that the hospital was left untouched (p. 2).

Wong recalls that in September 1858:

The benevolent work of the hospital was immediately recommenced, and has continued without further interruption, and with an augmenting number of patients, to the issue of this report. The statistics and particulars of cases given below will best illustrate the character of the Medical Department. The extent of these operations have exceeded our expectations, and prove that the hospital is favourably known both in the city of Canton and in the district of the surrounding country.

There is then some discussion of the staff that worked under Wong, notably Dr. Cox (p. 3).
There is next a chart featuring the monthly totals of the traffic of the hospital’s dispensary from March 1858 to June 1859, noting that over this time it served a total of 26,946 patients.

It is then mentioned that since February 1859 the hospital accommodated 119 resident patients, and that:

These are mostly people from the country, or places at some distance, and are generally ophthalmic cases. The reason of the predominance of this class of diseases over other is obvious. The restoration of sight is more essential to the duties of life than the removal of diseases that affect the mere convenience or general appearance of the person; especially as the majority of out-patients are of the labouring classes, whose time is continually demanded in the great struggle to obtain the necessaries of life, and therefore they cannot afford the hospital except in cases of great necessity.

The diseases that come daily under observation are mostly of a chronic character; ophthalmia, chronic and local rheumatism, coughs, dyspepsia, stomach and bowel irritations of children; neuralgia and headaches, ulcers and diseases of the skin, dropsy, regular and partial agues, glandular swellings, especially of the neck. The Chinese are free from many diseases of Europeans, or are only affected with their mild forms. (p. 4)

Wong then provides a discursive “list of cases that may prove interesting to the friends of the institution”, including some very serious and sophisticated diseases and surgeries, being Epidemic of Ague; Removal of Breast; Amputation of the Metacarpal Bone; Tumour of the Scalp; Fatty Tumour; Stone; Amputation of the Fore-Arm; Tumour of the Leg; Acute Dropsy and Albuminous Urine; Disease of the Base of the Brain; and Milky Exudation from the Scrotum (pp. 5-11).

On the work’s final page is a ‘Statement of the Receipts & Disbursements of the Hospital April, 1858 to June, 1859 …’. It reveals that in total the hospital had $1,663.35 in revenue versus $1,890.11 expenditures. While this yielded a deficit, many of the expenditures concerned one-time events about the rebuilding of the hospital, such that the overall impression is one of good, tight management. These figures are noted as having been approved by the medical missionary and noted artist Dr. Walter George Dickson (1821 – 1894). [p. 12].

While the work is recorded in 19th century bibliographies (ex. Cordier and Wylie & Gamble), we cannot trace the modern whereabouts of any other examples, nor are we aware of any sales records. This is not so surprising, as the survival rate of such fragile ephemeral early Hong Kong imprints is exceedingly low, while the print run for such a specialized title would have been quite limited.

The present example features the old handstamp of the ‘Birmingham Medical Institute’; however, this example was deaccessioned many years ago into a large collection of antiquarian medical books.

large collection of antiquarian medical books.

The work was issued in only this single separate edition, although a greatly reduced summary of the text was reprinted the following year within the Edinburgh Medical Journal.

References: OCLC: 1180776423 (but not citing the location of any examples); Henri CORDIER, Bibliotheca sinica: Dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à l’Empire chinois, vol. 1 (1881), p. 632; Alexander WYLIE and William GAMBLE, Memorials of Protestant Missionaries to the Chinese: Giving a List of Their Publications, and Obituary Notices of the Deceased. With Copious Indexes (1867), p. 245. Cf. [re: re-printing of summary of the present work:] WONG Fun, ‘Report of the Missionary Hospital at Kum-lee-Fow, in the Western Suburbs of Canton, for the year 1858-59. By Wong Fun, M.D.’, Edinburgh Medical Journal, vol. 5, pt. 2 (1860), pp. 686–691; [re: background:] Deborah CHEN, ‘“Christian Gentlemen and Thorough Doctors”: The Establishment of Medical Missionary Education in Guangzhou’, B.A. dissertation (Haverford College, 2004), pp. 19; G. H. CHOA, “Heal the Sick” Was Their Motto: the Protestant Medical Missionaries in China (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1990), p. 80; [On-line Article:] Dingjian Xie, ‘Won Fun: Dr Wong Fun became the first Western trained doctor in China after studying in Edinburgh in the 1850s’ (University of Edinburgh, June 24, 2024): https://global.ed.ac.uk/uncovered/1800-1859/wong-fun .