David Duncan Main

Medical Training and Calling

David Duncan Main (Chinese name Mei Tenggeng, 梅藤更, also written 梅滕更) was born on June 10, 1856, in Ayrshire, Scotland, into a practical-minded family. He first studied commerce at the University of Glasgow and had already entered business, but through faith and a sense of calling he turned to medicine. Supported by the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society, he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, with further training in Glasgow, and in 1881 obtained the Scottish triple medical qualification, resolved to use his medical skill to serve the sick in distant lands.

Called to China

In 1881 Main and his new wife, Florence Nightingale Smith (Chinese name Mei Fusun, 梅福孙), were sent out together by the Church Missionary Society and sailed east, arriving that same year in Hangzhou, the provincial capital of Zhejiang. He was appointed to lead the Anglican medical work in Hangzhou and took over the existing opium-refuge clinic, the Dafangbo (大方伯) dispensary. Opium was then doing widespread harm; day after day he treated addicts, while also performing cataract operations, treating leprosy and dispensing medicine to the poor. His reputation grew and more and more patients came to him.

Founding the Kwang Chi Hospital

As patients increased and beds ran short, in 1884 Main enlarged the dispensary and founded the Kwang Chi Hospital (广济医院), the forerunner of today's Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine. So that Western medicine might take root among the Chinese, around 1885 he started the Kwang Chi Medical School, serving as its principal himself and training Chinese doctors and nurses. He then established leprosy hospitals (for men in 1889 and for women in 1892) and a women's hospital (1894), so that the poor sick, leprosy patients, and women and children could all receive care. Florence, as head of nursing, assisted with the nursing and the work among women; husband and wife were of one mind, unchanging for decades.

Healing with Compassion

Main led the medical mission in Hangzhou for nearly half a century and was known for the compassion with which he treated patients, while the hospital steadily grew. By the time he left in his later years, the Kwang Chi Hospital had about 500 beds and 3 operating theatres, and admitted several thousand inpatients a year. It had become one of the largest mission hospitals in China and an important center of modern Western medical education in the country.

Retirement and Rest

In December 1926, past seventy and long beyond the mission's retirement age, Main returned with his wife to Edinburgh to rest at last. On August 30, 1934, he died of acute pneumonia in Edinburgh at the age of 78, and was buried with his wife in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh. The hospital, medical school and leprosy hospitals he left in Hangzhou have come through a century of upheaval without their roots being cut, and they still care for the sick and dying today, bearing witness to a Scottish doctor who gave his whole life in self-giving love.