We need to know what is the medical and what the educational work carried on at the station, when these are viewed, as they are viewed, separately, as distinct expressions of missionary zeal.
Dealing first with medical missions we suppose that the question might be put in this form, What are the medical missionary resources available in the district in relation to the need which it is proposed to meet?
Here again there arises the difficulty that there is no common agreement as to the purpose of the medical work of the missionary societies.

What are the doctors there for?
What does the hospital exist to do?
Who can tell?
So diverse are the ideas of different men on this subject, so little thought out, that a man of unusual experience told us that he had met few missionary doctors who could answer the question: "On the basis of what facts ought the question of the establishment of a hospital to be decided ?" Few could tell him whether in sending doctors the missionary societies ought to consider the duty of caring for the health of their missionaries first or last.

Few could tell him whether the care of the health of the children in schools and institutions was the first duty, or the last, or any duty at all, of the medical missionary.

Yet obviously, those two points if they were once admitted would influence largely the location of doctors and hospitals.

Again, we hear it argued that missionary societies ought to establish medical schools, hospitals, and institutions of the finest possible type in order to show how the thing really ought to be done, to demonstrate the very best example of western medical work, and to train natives to a western efficiency.