德贞 · 1837 – 1901 · British
John Hepburn Dudgeon (德贞) was born on April 7, 1837, in Scotland, and was a medical missionary sent to China by the London Missionary Society. He received a good education from childhood, studied medicine as a young man at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, and in 1862 received the degrees of Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery from the University of Glasgow, well grounded in learning and highly skilled.
Soon after finishing his studies he answered the call to overseas mission. In 1863 he was sent east by the London Missionary Society, and in December of that year he reached Beijing. This was in the early years of the Tongzhi reign of the Qing dynasty, when Western medicine in the capital was still in its infancy. He took over the Peking Hospital founded by his predecessor William Lockhart, popularly called the Double Flagpole Hospital after its location, and devoted himself to running its clinical work, giving treatment and medicine free to the poor and sick, making it one of the earliest Western hospitals in Beijing open to the public. From 1864 to 1868 he also served as physician to the British Legation in Beijing, and his medical reputation grew among both Chinese and Westerners.
Dudgeon did not limit himself to treating patients, but also gave attention to medical education and writing. Around 1870 he became medical officer of the Imperial Maritime Customs in the capital, and in 1871 he was appointed the first teacher of medicine and physiology at the Tongwen Guan, lecturing on anatomy, physiology and related subjects. Later generations have regarded this as the beginning of modern medical education in China, with far-reaching influence. So that the principles of Western medicine could benefit the Chinese, he devoted himself to translation and spent several years compiling Quanti Tongkao (A Comprehensive Study of Anatomy), drawing on Gray's Anatomy and other Western works; it was published by the Tongwen Guan in 1886 and became one of the earliest anatomy textbooks in China. He also wrote Tuoying Qiguan (Wonders of Photography), which explained the principles and techniques of photography in detail; it was one of the earliest Chinese books to give a systematic account of photography and introduced this new art to China. He also wrote works on health practice such as Kung-fu, or Tauist Medical Gymnastics, introducing to the West the traditional Chinese way of daoyin exercise and health cultivation, and published articles in periodicals such as Zhongxi Wenjian Lu (Peking Magazine), building bridges between Chinese and Western learning.
In 1884 he resigned from the London Missionary Society, but he remained in Beijing in private medical practice without changing his original purpose. He deeply abhorred the poison of opium, and in his later years took an active part in the anti-opium cause, proposing that China and Britain work together to root out the harm of opium. On February 22, 1901, Dudgeon died of illness in Beijing, having served in China for nearly 40 years.
Dudgeon's life spanned medicine, education, translation and cultural introduction; he helped people through the art of healing and enlightened them through learning. He was a pioneer of Western medicine in Beijing and a trailblazer of modern medical education and of photography in China, and the figure of his quiet labour remains in the records of modern exchange between China and the West.