of the children and consultation with the teachers, both
about the welfare of the school as a whole and of the care of individual
pupils. It might also include lectures in hygiene and kindred topics,
sanitation of buildings, and other assistance too varied to specify.
The table can only include visits and inspection of pupils.
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Total | Number | Total | Number | Remarks
Number | Regularly | Number | Regularly | and
of Schools. | Visited by | of | Inspected. | Conclusions.
| Medicals. | Scholars. | |
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The relation of the educational mission to the medical has not been
thought out any more carefully. There is in hospitals an opportunity of
extraordinary importance, a field of great fruitfulness which is largely
neglected. If the hospital is a missionary hospital, founded to heal the
souls as well as the bodies of men, ought not the patients in them to be
taught as well as medically treated? Have they any claim upon the care
of educational missionaries? Have the educational missionaries any duty
in hospitals? Very few, we think, have given much attention to these
questions: no society, so far as we know, has followed any definite
policy in regard to them. A single instance will reveal how important
they may be. A doctor who was deeply interested in the teaching of
Chinese illiterates took steps to have the illiterate convalescents in
his hospital taught to read. The average time which these patients spent
in the hospital was three weeks, and in that time they could learn to
read the Gospels in simplified script fluently. They thus left the
hospital not only healed in body, but with a new interest in life, and a
considerable knowledge of Christian truth, and a power to advance in it,
and a power also to instruct others. In a hospital for Chinese coolies
in France this doctor taught one patient to read the Gospel. The patient
was then removed to another hospital where he taught no less than forty
of his fellow-patients to read. If such results can be obtained, it
would be well to consider whether we are making full use of the
opportunities afforded by the gatheri
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