Chejungwon (House of Universal Helpfulness) ; Shiyiyuan (Charitable Hospital) ; Horace N. Allen, John K. Mackenzie ; Cooperative Hospital ; Missionary Hospital
Abstract
John K. Mackenzie (1850-1888), a medical missionary from the London Missionary Society, established the Shiyiyuan (Charitable Hospital) with the help of Li Hong-zhang’s help in Tianjin, China, in September, 1879. Horace N. Allen (1858-1932), a medical missionary from the Northern Presbyterian Church, established the Chejungwon (House of Universal Helpfulness) with the help of Korean King Gojong in Seoul, Korea, in April, 1885.
While the Shiyiyuan was developed from a viceroy hospital into a missionary hospital after Mackenzie’s death, the Chejungwon was converted into a missionary Severance hospital after Oliver R. Avison (1860-1956) assumed full managerial authority. Both hospitals earned the trust of powerful people on account of their surgical advances. With the help of authority figures, medical missionaries developed a more stable environment and strengthened the status of Western medicine.
However, the support of authority figures and governmental agencies did not mean that the two hospitals were government hospitals. Both were cooperative hospitals with a dual structure based on human resources in the form of medical missionaries and material resources afforded by governmental support. Both were developed into missionary hospitals with land ownership and management rights.
By contrast, the statuses of the medical schools attached to the two hospitals were indisputable. When the Yixueguan (Shiyiyuan Medical School) first opened,it was therefore a cooperative medical school with a dual structure relying on medical missionaries and governmental support, although it soon became a government medical school. The Chejungwon Uihakdang (Chejungwon Medical School) was also a cooperative medical school.