By Jay Hsu (許詠傑)
On the morning of 3 July 1892, a 25-year-old Scottish doctor died of typhoid while travelling south from Changhua to seek treatment.
His name was Gavin Russell. He had been in Taiwan for three years, running a clinic in Changhua on his own. Toa-sia Clinic was the first Western-style hospital in central Taiwan.
Three years later, David Landsborough III, who had just graduated from the University of Edinburgh Medical School, took over his post. Landsborough stayed in Changhua for forty years, turning a small rural clinic into the medical hub of central Taiwan. This year’s Toronto TAIWANfest exhibition, “From Scotland to Changhua: A Century of Medicine and Education”, sets out to answer one question: how did British Presbyterian Church medical missionaries actually change Taiwan’s healthcare system?
Why was Scottish medicine so different?
In 18th-century Edinburgh, medical training moved from the lecture hall to the hospital bedside. Hermann Boerhaave at the University of Leiden had set the precedent, and the University of Edinburgh turned it into a system: structured anatomy teaching, clinical placements at the Royal Infirmary, and students following physicians on their rounds. This approach was later adopted by most medical schools and spread across the world through the British Empire and its missionaries.
Many of the Scottish doctors who came to Taiwan through the British Presbyterian Church trained within this system. James Maxwell opened Taiwan’s first Western hospital on Khoan-sai Street in Tainan in 1865. Peter Anderson took over in 1879. Gavin Russell went north to Toa-sia in 1888, and David Landsborough arrived in 1895. There was also Elizabeth Christie, who reached Taiwan in 1891 and became the first Western woman doctor on the island through Scotland’s Triple Qualification.
The Matsu Temple at the South Gate, Dr. Lan at the West Gate
In 1907 a new hospital building opened, named the English Presbyterian Hospital of Changhua. Landsborough practised there until 1936, seeing three to four hundred patients a day. He was the first doctor in central Taiwan able to offer consistent Western medical care, and he trained around seventy or eighty local students, passing his skills on one at a time. People in Changhua later had a saying: “The Matsu temple is at the south gate, Dr. Lan is at the west gate.” A temple and a clinic had become equally central to the life of the city.
In 1928 a poor farmer’s son from Shengang, Changhua named Chiu Kim-iau developed a leg wound that would not heal. Landsborough went through every medical text he had and decided to try a skin graft. His wife, Marjorie Learner, offered four pieces of skin from her own leg.
The graft failed. The boy’s body rejected skin that was not his own. Landsborough operated a second time, and the boy finally recovered through a graft of his own skin.
A failed operation became the story the hospital is best known for: “the love that cuts to the skin”. The following year the Landsboroughs paid for Chiu’s schooling, since his family could not afford it, and he later became a pastor.
Landsborough’s son, David Landsborough IV, carried his father’s work forward. He was born in the hospital where his father worked, and he learned Taiwanese before he learned English. After becoming superintendent in 1953, he handed each department over to Taiwanese doctors one at a time. In 1959 the hospital opened a dedicated dermatology department, which later became the region’s centre for leprosy care, and in 1965 it established a neurology department, his own specialty.
Around the same time, the hospital began training interns from Kaohsiung Medical College and Taipei Medical College, growing from a clinic into a genuine teaching hospital. He retired to England in 1980 and put a sign reading “Formosa” on the house he lived in outside London.
His last words were spoken in Taiwanese: “Look after the poor.”
How did the hospital put down roots in Taiwan?
In 1940 the Japanese colonial government expelled every foreign missionary in Taiwan. As a result, by that point every department at Changhua Christian Hospital was already staffed entirely by Taiwanese medical personnel.
After the war, China’s Communist government expelled foreign missionaries from mainland China as well, and a number of American and European doctors moved to Taiwan. David Landsborough IV returned to his birthplace of Changhua in 1952 as part of that same movement of people.
Over the following half century the hospital continued to grow. In 1996, on its hundredth anniversary, it was restructured as a foundation. In 2000 it was formally accredited as a medical centre. Starting in 2001 it took over Paak Choan Hospital in Lukang and several district hospitals around Yuanlin, renaming them Luki and Nanki hospitals. In 2013 the whole system was consolidated under the Changhua Christian Medical Foundation.
Today Changhua Christian Hospital is the only medical centre in Changhua County, with a system spanning Taichung, Changhua, Nantou, and Yunlin, and more than eight thousand staff. It all began with two rented rooms in 1896.
Toronto TAIWANfest will present From Scotland to Changhua: A Century of Medicine and Education in partnership with Changua Christian Hospital Historical Museum. The author, Jay Hsu (許詠傑), curated this free exhibition, which will be in Tent F at Harbourfront Centre from noon to 7 p.m. on Saturday (August 29) and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday (August 30).
The exhibition is part of Toronto TAIWANfest’s Dialogue with Scotland. For more information, visit the Toronto TAIWANfest website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
