Ul mM, ©,

THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION

General Bulletin October 26, 1921

DEDICATING THE PEKING MEDICAL COLLEGE*

Peking is beautiful in the early autumn. The hutung dust is then less
stifling than usual, the open shops present fascinating pictures on all the
streets, the itinerant venders and beggars send forth their calls harmoni-
ously, funeral and wedding processions display their most gorgeous designs.
Through the clear air the western hills stand out green and purple in the
distance; and in the foreground rise Coal Hill with its artistic little pago-
das, the magnificent gates of the Tartar Wall, the Imperial City with its
yellow roofs and, not less conspicuous, the great green roofs of the YU Wang
Fu, the new medical college and hospital.

To see and to dedicate the Peking Medical College, scientists and dele-
gates came at this alluring period of the autumn, from Japan, from England,
Scotland and Ireland, from Java and Korea and the Philippines, from Canada
and from France, from the United States and from every important province of
China.

The academic procession of these eminent visitors on September 19 was
striking in its contrasts. Scientists from the East and from the West
marched together in occidental academic costume, passing in slow procession
beneath the great overhanging roofs of green tile, past modern laboratories
and age-old water carts, through rows of students of western medicine and
past groups of wondering coolies and ever-present beggars. The street cries
of the singing craftsmen merged with the martial rhythm of the new great
organ as the column swept slowly into the beautiful temple building which
within proved to be a modern auditorium.

The Program of the Week

The dedication ceremonies and the medical conference held in connection
with these exercises extended over a week and a day - from September 15 to
September 22.

Each morning clinic sections occupied the first two hours, visiting pro-
fessors alternating with members of the college faculty in giving demonstra-
tions in medicine, surgery, obstetrics, pathology, and the medical and

“this Bulletin contains an informal account of the dedication written
by Edwin R. Embree, the Secretary of the Foundation and of the Peking Trus-
tees, who has just returned to New York after four months in Peking confer-
ring with the Director and Faculty concerning the program and budget of the
college.
26

 

Section from the Pathe film - The Academic Procession passing from the
college laboratories to auditorium - Drs. de Schweinits, Florence
Sabin, Goldwater, Barton, and Tuffier are conspicuous from right
to left behind the marshall, who carries the baton.

surgical specialties. The attendance and the interest at these six or
seven sectional clinics held each morning throughout the week were a gauge
of the scientific value of the conference and a prophecy of the significance
to individuals and institutions throughout China of the new college and its
brilliant faculty.

The last hour of each morning was devoted to a paper delivered in the
college auditorium by one of the visiting scientists on some phase of medicine.

The afternoons were given over to receptions, to inspection of the new
buildings, and to personally conducted sightseeing tours about Peking.

At nine each evening an address on a medical topic of general interest
was given in the auditorium. These evening programs included an introduc-
tory survey of medical education in China by Dr. Hume, of Changsha; a recount
of adventures in public health by President Vincent; moving pictures and dem-
onstrations of health propaganda by Dr. W. W. Peter, of the China Public
Health Councils and the valedictory address of the Conference by Dr. Welch.

Such was the skeleton of the program. It was fleshed out, in accor-
@ance with individual tastes and opportunities, by the widest variety of
scientific and social functions.
 

Scene in the court between the main gate of the college and the
auditorium - Physiology building in center of picture.
Across this space the academic procession marched
to the dedication ceremonies

The foreign legations gave dinners and teas; Chinese societies gave
luncheons; the Peking Chamber of Commerce bundled us all off in a flock of
automobiles late one afternoon to the summer palace of the late Empress
Dowager for a picnic supper and a magic view by the yellow September moon
of the royal pleasure grounds among the Western Hills. The President of
the Republic geve a formal reception ~ top hats and frock coats - in the
ugliest of green-carpeted rooms situated in an otherwise picturesque por-
tion of the old Forbidden City. A dinner to faculty, trustees, and dele-
gates closed Saturday evening in a riot of speech making. On Sunday morn-
ing Bishop Roots presided at the service in the college auditorium or chapel;
in the evening a new era began in Peking life with a recital on the college
organ, the first such instrument - save for a tiny one in the Catholic
Church - to make its appearance these thousands of years in this old capital
of China.

During all these deys the trustees were attending few receptions or
clinics. They were meeting in the council room of the college from nine
o'clock in the morning until five or six in the afternoon of every day,
4.

 

 

 

The west gate of the yi Wang Fu - entrance to the hospital and
nurses home. Native buildings and rickshaws ere shown on
either side of the hutung or street in the foreground

reviewing each item of the budgets proposed for this end the next two years,
considering in detail the plans and needs and opportunities of this insti-
tution which presents so many vexed problems yet which seems to promise so
much for the future of medicine in China.

The Institution Which was Dedicated

The institution which was being dedicated is a medical college and hos-
pital erected by the Rockefeller Foundation in architecture characteristic
of the best in Chinese classic and sacred buildings, and maintained in
accordance with high modern scientific standards.

Sixteen buildings, with sweeping green tile roofs and great overhang-
ing eaves, house the laboratories, hospital wards, and auxiliary structures
of the institution proper. These are situated on the Yi Wang Fu, the
ancient palace grounds of Prince ril.
5.

One block east, on Hata-
men Street, stands the build-
ing of the old Union Medical
College now occupied by the
Pre-Medical School, which gives
three years of intensive train-
ing in the chemical, physical,
and biological sciences prepar-
atory to medicine. A little
further east, across Hatamen
Street and situated a couple
of blocks apart, are the north
and south residence compounds.
Here, shut off by high walls
from the dirty, disease-filled
hutungs of Peking, groups of
modern brick houses with elec-
tric lights, furnace heat, and
running water, stand on trim
New England lawns, shaded by
ancient trees, banked by shrubs
and flowers. These are the
homes of members of the faculty
end their families. Near the
south compound stands the old
H'sin kai lu Hospital, now
being transformed into a men's
dormitory. Adjoining both
the H'sin kai lu and the south

 

 

A Corner of the College Auditorium compound lie the palace grounds
Showing Anatomy Building at of Prince Yi in dilapidated
the Left Across the Street grandeur.

The faculty falls naturally
into three groups: first, a

nucleus of physicians who have served valuable terms in mission hospitals -
and schools and who were selected from the six or seven hundred medical mis-
sionaries in China and further trained under fellowships in Englend or America
before being called to positions on the steff; second, a group who have been
brought directly from teaching or research institutions in the West to con-
tinue their scientific careers in the new college; and third, Chinese. These
latter already form a fair proportion of the whole faculty. It is hoped that
their number will steadily increase and that their academic and administra-
tive responsibilities will be rapidly extended.

It has not been a simple matter to assemble this group of able men and
women in a new institution situated far from other centers of scientific work.
Nor has it been easy for them to settle down to their work in this strange
environment during these first years when buildings were still in process of
construction and programs and policies were still being worked out.
6.

It is difficult to give a true picture of any aspect of life or work
in Peking. The residence compounds are trim and pretty. Yet living
shut in by compound walls on the doorsteps of the families of the seme
people with whom one is working all day in laboratories and wards, makes
life a bit intense. Twenty to thirty children per compound do not add to
the quiet of life nor to the ease of neighborliness. Outside the compounds
the city of Peking has aspects of beauty, many ramifications of interest

 

 

 

Group of Trustees and Officers of Peking Union Medical College
taken by the entrence porch of the Anatomy Building

From left to right: Dr. Francis W. Peabody, of Harvard Medical School;

Dr. Henry S. Houghton, Director of the College; Miss Eggleston, Assistant
Secretary of the Board of Trustees; Edwin R. Embree, Secretary of the Rocke-
feller Foundation; Prof. Paul Monroe, Teachers College, Columbia University;
James L. Barton, Secretary, American Board of Foreign Missions; Dr. William
H. Welch, of Johns Hopkins University; Dr. Richard M. Pearce, Director,
Foundation's Division of Medical Education; George E. Vincent, President,
Rockefeller Foundation; John D. Rockefeller, Jr.; Roger S. Greene, Resident
Director of the Foundation's China Medical Board; F. H. Hawkins, London Mis-
sionary Society; Martin A. Ryerson, Chairman, Board of Trustees, University
of Chicago; J. Christie Reid, Medical Missionary Association of London.
7.

and charm, but these are enveloped in dirt and violent smells, and an all-
pervading atmosphere of poverty and disease. House rent and such cloth-
ing as can be purchased, laundry and abundance of servants are cheap
beyond the imagination of Western householders, But there are things which
no amount of money can buy for the resident of the dingy city of Peking.

Policies of the College ~ Expense

It was recognized when plans for China were first considered, that
neither this institution nor any number of schools which one agency might
maintein would be able to train the great body of medical practitioners
needed by the Chinese. The purpose therefore in establishing the college
was to set standards, to train leaders, to demonstrate what an adequate
medical college in China might represent. Thus by a single institution
it was hoped to influence an entire nation. This purpose has been adhered
to consistently. It is because of this purpose that so great significance
was attached to the attendance at the dedication of the lerge body of medi-
cal men from all parts of China and to their expressed desire to share in
the opportunities for co-operation and for advanced study.

The expense of constructing the buildings has been great. The war,
loss in exchange, and the difficulty of erecting Western laboratories and
wards end in installing power-driven machinery in the Orient heve all con-
tributed to multiply a total cost which under the best of conditions prob-
ably would have amounted to four millions gold. The expenditures for
equipment and supplies also have been larger than originally planned,

Finally the costs for annual maintenance threatened to become intoler-
ably great. In order to study the program and to develop it in detail, to
amalyze the proposed expenditures end, so far as seemed wise, to reduce then,
officers of the Foundation spent recent months in Peking and the trustees
of the college and certain members of the China Medical Board and Foundation
journeyed to Peking this autumn and devoted many hours to considering every
aspect of the work end every item of the proposed expenditures.

The budgets agreed to for the college and hospital for the next three
years are slightly below those of similar well-established institutions of
high standing in the United States. Of course the classes of students are
still small, and not more than 175 hospital beds are to be used at present.

The sums made available, so much above these of other colleges and hos-
pitals in the Chinese Republic, and the programs adopted make this institu-
tion unique in all China,- in same aspects unique in the entire Far Fast.

This places upon the faculty a responsibility for leadership in teach-
ing, in hospital management and in the advancement of medical science and
the public health to which they sare alive. Few medical schools, few fac-
ulties have ever had before them the opportunities or the challenge to high
endeavor which now confront the Peking Union Medical College.

China, as one is constantly reminded, is a great and slow-moving mass.
The very magnitude of the work forbids the expectation of hasty results -
Rome was not built ina day. As Mr. Rockefeller pointed out in his dedica-
tion address, not in terms of a day nor a year nor a decade is the work of
this institution to be judged. But in the revolving years end generations
who can tell to what tree of influence this mustard seed may grow in the
life of the great old country of China.