Thomas Cochrane, an extraordinary British medical missionary in modern China

Abstract

In February 1906, Union Medical College (UMC, Peking) held the opening ceremony. The establishment and operation of the College was mostly attributed to Thomas Cochrane (1866-1953) from London Missionary Society. As a medical missionary in China, Cochrane lived through the dramatic political and social changes in the modern history of China and the world.As an English medical missionary, he witnessed and experienced the extreme poverty and severe shortage of medicine of the Chinese people when he was in Chaoyang, Liaoning Province, most inhabited by the Mongolian ethnic group. Then, he survived the Boxer Movement which with great resentment toward Christianity massacred the Chinese and foreign missionaries. After that, he approached to and then won over the trust and appreciation of the highest ruler of the Qing Dynasty. After the establishment of Republic of China, he handed over in person the college established by himself to the philanthropic organization of American capitalist. Cochrane's less than 30 years of life in China mirrored the great political, social, healthy, educational, intellectual, and ideological changes in China that shaped the medicine and health at the turn of the 20(th) century.