Dr. Hue wrote of the commencement exercises of the class graduating the following year:  “Quite a number of the gentry, and the teachers of the government schools for young men, had asked to come to attend the graduating exercises; and of course we were very much pleased to have them.  They did seem to enjoy it very much.  Some of them have told my friends that they were surprised and delighted to see that their countrywomen could be so brave and do so well.  They also wished that their students might have come to see and to listen for themselves.  One of the gentry decided that day that his daughter should come to us to study medicine.”

Up to this time no girl who did not have a diploma from a mission school had been admitted to the medical course of the Woolston Hospital.  But in 1906, yielding to the great desire of many other young women to take medical training, Dr. Hue opened the course to any who could pass an examination on certain subjects which she considered essential prerequisites to a medical course.  Four of the seven who presented themselves for examination were passed; only one was a Christian girl, two were daughters-in-law of officials, the other a daughter of one of the gentry.

An extract from the examination paper of one of them shows the real earnestness of purpose with which the work was undertaken.  The first question asked was, “Please give your reasons for coming to study medicine?” “Alas, the women of my country are forgotten in the minds of the intellectual world.  How could they think of a subject as important as the education of medicine!  The result is that many lives are lost, simply on account of no women physicians for women.  Though mission hospitals for women and children have been established for a number of years in the Fuhkien province they are far less than we need.  For this reason I have a great desire for a medical education, hoping that I may be able to help, and to save my fellow sisters from suffering.  It is for this reason I dare to apply for this instruction.”

The graduates of the medical course are as yet not great in numbers, but they are doing earnest, efficient work.  Some of them have remained in the hospital as assistants or matrons.  Of a recent graduating class, one went to the Methodist hospital in Ngu-cheng to assist Dr. Li Bi Cu, the physician in charge; another went to a large village, to be the only physician practising Western medicine; the third to Tientsin, as an assistant in the Imperial Peiyang Woman’s Medical College.

V

THE FAVOUR OF THE PEOPLE