Black and white lantern slide of a scene set in the operating theatre at the London Missionary Society hospital in Hankow (Hankou). Surgical apparatus and medicines can be seen clearly. Two European doctors tend a patient lying clothed on the operating table. Chinese medical staff stand in their aprons around the theatre. Note the surgical member of staff in the centre of the slide showing his queue, the long plait characteristically worn by Manchu men and enforced on the population during the Qing dynasty (1644 - 1911). In the new Republic of China, the queue was looked down upon as a symbol of the old Imperial regime, and many men cut their hair in response, dating this slide to before 1912. The London Missionary Society first set up a hospital in Hankou in 1866 under Dr Griffith John. In 1889, Margaret Hospital (for women) extended L.M.S medical mission work, for which Hankou had become a centre. Of 95 L.M.S missionaries in China in 1900, 26 were fully qualified doctors. This slide comes from a collection held by the Church of Scotland and generated by the medical missionary Charles Somerville, who worked for the London Missionary Society in Hankou from 1904 to 1914.
Format
lantern slides 8.2 x 8.2cm lantern slides photographs
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