Some of the best surgical work in the world is done by medical missionaries, who often have the poorest kind of equipment in the way of building and apparatus. Dr. H. N. Kinnear, at the head of a hospital in Fuchau, used the sitting-room of his own house for an operating-room, but in one year he performed over eight hundred operations, with only his wife and untrained natives for assistants. Of the nearly 18,000 patients treated last year, several came from high-class families, and they were most appreciative of what was done for them. A distinctive feature of this and all mission hospitals is the person, usually a native Christian, who acts as a kind of chaplain. Many of the patients have never heard the gospel story, and while they are being helped physically they listen willingly to what is told them. Religious services are also held every day in the room where people await their turn and receive the bamboo tallies that decide the order in which they are to be seen. Fees are ridiculously small, according to our American standard, five cents being the maximum, except in special cases, when the munificent sum of twenty cents is charged. This allows precedence to men who wear the long gown of the literati and object to waiting while laborers and women receive attention. Dr. Kinnear is a resourceful man, and often uses the Chinese queue to hold in place dressings of wounds about the head or as a sling for the support of injured or diseased hands and arms. He writes that he considers medical missionaries the most favored of all workers. Yet his salary is far below what he could earn as a surgeon in the United States.—Boston Transcript.
(2001)
See Missions; Missionaries, Medical.
Medical Science—See Life Prolonged.
Meeting of Friends and Foes—See
Amity After War.
MELODY FROM DRUDGERY
When you go into some great cathedral
across the sea, to watch the player on the
keys, which away up in the tower are sounding
forth their wondrous chime, down there
you hear only the clatter of the wires, the
deafening din of the reverberating bells, and
the clanging of the wooden shoes he wears
upon his hands with which to strike the keyboard,
sending out away up there in the
belfry the silvery notes which he himself
can scarcely hear.
Ah, but they are heard. Many a tired soul stops on the distant hillside in his day's toil to listen to those strains, and his heart is filled with a strange gladness and peace. And amid the din and tumult of your daily work, it may sometimes seem as tho you were doing naught which was worth the doing; down there in obscurity, unthought of and unnoticed by the great world, simply beating out the allotted task upon the clattering keyboard which the Master has set for you. But do it well. Do it as the violet smiles, as the bird sings, as Jesus lived, and you shall send out over land and sea music, which shall bless the generations afar off.—George T. Dowling.
(2002)
Membership, Church—See Badges.
Membership of Churches, Distribution of—See Church Statistics.
Memorial Day—See Dead, Influence of;
Decorating Soldiers' Graves; Honor's Roll-call.
MEMORIAL OF LINCOLN
In the museum connected with the monument
to Abraham Lincoln, at Springfield,
Illinois, among other relics suggestive of the
spirit and mission of the great emancipator,
is treasured a piece of the rich gown worn
by Laura Keene, the actress, in Ford's
Theater, Washington, on the tragic night
when Lincoln fell. After the fatal shot of
the assassin, Miss Keene sprang to the box
and caught in her lap the head of the slain
President, while the blood from the oozing
wound saturated a portion of her garment.
After the event, that blood-stained breadth
was cut from the gown, sent to Springfield
and preserved as the speaking symbol of the
great sacrificial life which Lincoln lived even
unto death, on behalf of the redemption of
the black slaves of the South.—H. C. Mabie,
"Methods in Evangelism."
(2003)
Memorial to Humble Helpers—See Negro "Mammy" Remembered.
Memorials of Genius—See Economy, Divine.
MEMORIALS OF PATRIOTISM
When the Paris Commune savagely threw
down the Vendome column all the civilized
world felt a shock of disgust. Why? Certainly
not because all the world equally ad-
