Missionaries inChengdu in the early1920s.Thebicyclebelonged toDr. Lindsay. Photo: Memory of West China Union University, Sichuan University Press (2006) pg 83. Dentistry had not been established as a profession in China and those who practised it were largely untrained. Dr. Lindsay was not supposed to treat Chinese patients until he developed proficiency in the language. Early Life Between 1903 and 1907, when Dr. Ashley Lindsay was a dental student at the Royal College of Dental Surgeons (which would become the U of T Faculty of Dentistry in 1925), he was actively involved in the YMCA and went on to serve as president of his YMCA chapter during his final year. As a friend of Rev. Edward Wilson Wallace, who was a member of the “Victoria Eight,” who were eight young Victoria College graduates who set out on missionary trips to China and Japan in 1906, Dr. Lindsay also began to dream of becoming a missionary in China and volunteered with the Methodist Church Mission Board. In 1906, Dr. Lindsay applied to the mission board to serve as a dentist in China. He was turned down because, at the time, only ordained men and medical workers could be appointed for mission work. A true fighter, Dr. Lindsay never backed down. In 1907, after securing support from his home church in Quebec, he applied again. This time, he was successfully appointed as a medical missionary, with the understanding that he would practise dentistry. At the mission board’s request, Dr. Lindsay studied post graduate anesthesia and minor surgery at the Toronto Western Hospital for six months in preparation for his posting in China. He was one of the first dentists to take an internship and post-graduate study in any hospital. Aiming to have “his certificate re-printed in Chinese,” with his newly wedded wife, Alice, and a small travelling dental case, he boarded an ocean liner inVancouver in 1907. His voyage to China took five months and involved many challenges and difficulties, including being detained for 10 days at a customs’ barrier as innocent bystanders of a plot among the ship’s captains to smuggle contraband goods. The ocean liner docked in Shanghai, after which Dr. Lindsay and Alice travelled via boat on the Yangtze River to Kiating, and then took a four-day ride on a sedan chair—an enclosed seat borne on two poles by bearers—before arriving in Chengdu in March 1908. Arriving in China Other Canadian missionaries, including Dr. Omar Leslie Kilborn and his wife Dr. Retta G. Kilborn, were already providing medical care and working toward creating medical education for Chinese students in the old Canadian Methodist Mission Hospital in Chengdu. According to the mission board, Dr. Lindsay was expected to dedicate the first two years of his mission to studying the Chinese language. However, dental care was in high demand among the expatriate community in Chengdu and, soon after his arrival, Dr. Lindsay allocated half of each day to treating English-speaking patients. In 1908, dentistry had not been established as a profession in China and those who practised it were largely untrained. Dr. Lindsay was not supposed to treat Chinese patients until he developed proficiency in the language, but soon he was providing care for Dr. Kilborn’s Chinese friends. A public spectacle created by the niece of the Viceroy of Sichuan, Zhao Erxun, who arrived at Dr. Lindsay’s clinic in a grand, red-canopied sedan chair carried by four bearers and accompanied by many servants and soldiers, became an unintentional advertisement for Dr. Lindsay’s dental clinic. 31 Issue 2 | 2024 | Issues and People
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