Perhaps no gibe is easier than that aimed at the
missionary. It is not difficult to make cheap jokes about the missionary turning up with the Bible in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other, or to talk airily about stately, magnificent (but nude) races being forcibly swathed in garments of Victorian cut and respectability. Our advice to sunk jesters is to read this little volume of open letters from medical missionaries abroad to their medical colleagues at home. Therein they may read an account of the glorious fight against death, dirt, vice and superstition which is being waged by these Christian men of science, opposed by tremendous odds. They might like to learn that amongst one race of noble savages, the Bunyoro, eighty-four per cent. give a history of venereal infection, whilst the infant mortality reaches seventy-five per cent. The book should certainly be read for its very great intrinsic interest alone, but if it should also curb the tongues Pf the more ignorant kind of missionary-baiters the publication )f this book will serve a double purpose.
Previous page
