Thomas Cochrane and the Dragon Throne: Confronting disease, distrust and murderous rebellion in Imperial China

Front Cover
SPCK, Nov 15, 2018 - Biography & Autobiography - 224 pages

In 1897, Tom Cochrane, a young doctor, arrived with his bride in Inner Mongolia, China’s northernmost territory. Three years later, after labouring single-handedly in a mud-floored dispensary, he realized that his work was a drop in a sea of suffering. A radical new approach was needed. He was gripped by the vision of a Western medical college and teaching hospital in Peking.

In 1900, the Boxer uprising broke out. Fanatics roamed the countryside crying, ‘Kill the foreigners! Kill them before breakfast!’ The Cochranes and their three little boys fled as thirty thousand Christians and hundreds of missionaries were butchered. Undeterred, Tom returned to Peking in 1901 to treat beggars and lepers in converted mule stables.

After bringing a major cholera epidemic under control, he won allies at the imperial court. With the help of the chief eunuch, he gained the support of the dreaded Empress Dowager. In 1906, Cochrane established the Union Medical College in Peking, China’s first Western medical school. It still stands today, a prestigious academic centre, its missionary origins forgotten, but it is one of countless seeds planted by Christians in China.

 

Selected pages

Contents

List of illustrations Preface
Acknowledgements
A note on the Boxer Uprising of 1900
Journey to the interior
The neediest place on earth
The Peach Blossom Spring
The medical ropes
Life in the villages
Back to Peking
The Blue Death
The Empress and her eunuchs
Ten Thousand Good Deeds Brought Together
Getting started
Years of fulfilment
The Rockefeller succession
After China

The scourge of Mongolia
The gathering storm
Kill the foreigners before breakfast
Empress Dowager Cixi
Imperial eunuchs
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

addicts asked baby bandits became beggars Board Boxer Uprising boys Britain British brought buildings burned called century Chaoyang China Chinese doctors Christian church Cixi’s court death described diary died dispensary Emperor Empire Empress Dowager Cixi epidemic eunuch European evangelist everything eyes face father feet Forbidden City foreign Free Healing Hospital Gilmour Glasgow Glasgow Medical School gospel Grace Greenock Guangxu Imperial India Inner Mongolia Jesus kang knew lamas later legation Li Lianying Lianying Liu-i lived London Missionary Society Manchu Mandarin medical missionaries medical school medicine miles mission Mister Heaven Mongols never night opium Palace patients Peking photograph pigtail pony prayed prayer preach Prince Prince Su province Rockefeller Shanghai spirit streets teaching Thomas Cochrane thousands throne Tientsin Tom Cochrane Tom’s took town treated treaty ports troops Union Medical College villages Western women wrote

About the author (2018)

Andy Adam read history at Oxford, began as a journalist, changed horses in his mid-twenties and paid his way through medical school by "an unholy mixture" of freelance writing, male modelling and cabaret. He joined the RAF as a medical officer, saw the world with his family and finished his medical career as a consultant pathologist in Somerset. Thomas Cochrane was his maternal grandmother’s second husband and an important figure in Andy's life; he died in 1953 when Andy was fourteen. His life as a medical missionary in Imperial China fascinated Andy even before he inherited his papers.

Bibliographic information

TitleThomas Cochrane and the Dragon Throne: Confronting disease, distrust and murderous rebellion in Imperial China
AuthorAndrew E. Adam
PublisherSPCK, 2018
ISBN0281080372, 9780281080373
Length224 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Biography & Autobiography / Medical (incl. Patients)
Biography & Autobiography / Religious
Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology
History / Asia / China
  
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