John Kenneth MacKenzie

On 8 June 1875, MacKenzie was welcomed to Hankow by Mr. and Mrs. Griffith John as well as Mr. Foster, his future colleagues. Hankow, previously known as the "Heart of the Empire", is large and situated in the middle of the central province of Hupeh where the Yang-tse River and the Han River meet. In Hankow, MacKenzie assisted Dr. Reid at the local missionary hospital and dispensary. In addition, MacKenzie also took daily Chinese lessons after work in the hospital. He faced tremendous prejudice because many of the Chinese did not trust the medicine of the foreign on the part of the Christians living in Hankow. But after MacKenzie successfully attended the chief deacon of the Hankow Church, the distrust was alleviated. In August, MacKenzie suffered heavily from Malaria, but recovered in a month and he soon became head doctor at the hospital. Although he was very busy in the hospital, MacKenzie felt the urge to help the surrounding villages in the country-side surrounding Hankow. He and Mr. Joh, a colleague, visited a number of villages where eye disease was the most prevalent cases. At some of the villages they met physical hostility toward foreign Christians, but after meeting with the chief magistrate of the district, the magistrate issued a proclamation through the district and the villagers were much more welcoming the second time around. Word of the foreign doctor soon spread all across the province of Hupeh. John MacKenzie cured hundreds of opium smoking patients and thousands of other patients. He discovered that many Chinese doctors were coming to him with questions and he realised that they had little to no knowledge of anatomy of physiology. He began his plans to construct a medical school with the hopes of teaching the Chinese how to perform surgery. In December 1876, Dr. MacKenzie travelled to Shanghai to marry Miss Travers, the woman he met while doing Christian work in Bristol. They returned to Hankow and continued their daily work; MacKenzie worked at the hospital and cured an average of 100 patients each day and Miss Travers began to learn Chinese. There was a cholera outbreak that MacKenzie treated and there was also an increase in surgeries, indicating the building trust of the Chinese to western medicine.

In March 1879, Dr. MacKenzie and his family moved stations from Hankow to Tientsin. This move was due to family matters for the health of his wife was failing and he believed a change in environment would be best. At this time, Dr. MacKenzie also had a daughter named Maggie. Tientsin is located in the North very close to the capital, Beijing. It was the port of the capital at that time. Upon his arrival at Tientsin, the city had no hospital or foreign drugs, only a small dispensary ran by Mr. Pai. MacKenzie used his own money to buy foreign drugs to dispense to people in need but only a few showed up each day. After curing a general one day, he discussed with him his plans of building a new hospital. This information was passed onto the Viceroy of the province who decided to help fund the construction and running of the new hospital. After the completion of the hospital, residents of Tientsin and the surrounding areas came in great numbers to be treated. MacKenzie treated many cases of eye disease, performed many surgeries, and gave out thousands of vaccines. He was assisted in 1887 and 1888 by Dr. Fred Charles Roberts, who would end up succeeding Mackenzie after his death.[1]

Even though MacKenzie was struggling to keep up with the hospital, he still had the goal of creating a medical school in China to teach the Chinese of western medicine. His proposition was accepted by the government and thus, he received eight students who were to be used as medical officers by the government after their education with MacKenzie. His small medical school was officially opened in December 1881. The structure of the school mirrored that of western schools, with textbooks, exams, and papers. MacKenzie took a break from China in 1883 for five months to return to England to visit his wife and daughter who had moved back after Ms. MacKenzie's health continued to decline. When he returned, six students graduated from the Tientsin Medical School in 1884 after three years of study. MacKenzie withdrew from being involved in the medical school because he didn't want to spend his time raising pupils up to be Government workers.