There is in hospitals an opportunity of extraordinary importance, a field of great fruitfulness which is largely neglected.

If the hospital is a missionary hospital, founded to heal the souls as well as the bodies of men, ought not the patients in them to be taught as well as medically treated?
Have they any claim upon the care of educational missionaries?
Have the educational missionaries any duty in hospitals?
Very few, we think, have given much attention to these questions: no society, so far as we know, has followed any definite policy in regard to them.

A single instance will reveal how important they may be.

A doctor who was deeply interested in the teaching of Chinese illiterates took steps to have the illiterate convalescents in his hospital taught to read.

The average time which these patients spent in the hospital was three weeks, and in that time they could learn to read the Gospels in simplified script fluently.