Of course that does not mean that support ought to be given or withheld solely on the statistics so provided.
There may be a thousand reasons for strengthening and enlarging work where this table would suggest less need; but no support should be given in ignorance of these facts.
Then we need tables to reveal, as far as such tables can reveal anything, the extent of the medical mission work done in the year.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------ District|Area|Popul-|Hospital |Dispensary,|Total|Propor- |Remarks | |ation |Patients in|Patients in|Pat- |tion of |and | | |Year |Year |ients|Patients |Conclu- | | | | | |to Popul-|sions | | | | | |ation | -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | | | | | | |M.|F.|Child|M.|F.|Child| | | | | | | | | | | | | | -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | | | | | | | | ________|____|______|__|__|_____|__|__|_____|_____|_________|________ Turning then from the medical need to be met, we proposed to inquire into the medical work as an evangelistic agency.

This inquiry is hard to formulate; but we suggest that the three tables appended, taken in conjunction with the preceding, would throw certain light on this question, and would help towards a true understanding.
First, we inquire into the relative extent to which the medical workers make use of the assistance of evangelistic workers.

This table would _not_ reveal the evangelistic influence of the hospital.

On the one hand, there is sometimes a tendency for the medical men and women to do medical work exclusively, and to leave all religious work to the evangelistic workers, and to give way to the temptation to imagine that if evangelistic workers read or preach in the waiting-room and visit the patients, the medicals can be satisfied that they have done their duty as medical missionaries.

On the other hand, a medical who does his medical work in the Spirit, who speaks to and prays with his patients, exercises an evangelistic influence wider and deeper than that of many of the evangelistic workers directly so called, and in such a case the fact that the evangelistic workers are apparently lacking in the hospital does not at all show that the medical work is not a strong evangelistic force.