At Dr. John Kenneth MacKenzie's suggestion, she was invited to visit Tianjin by Li Hongzhang, in order to make an examination which was deemed important by the European local surgeons, but which Chinese etiquette forbade their undertaking.
She yielded, despite the adverse judgment of most of the members of her own mission; but she has had the satisfaction since of finding all approve her course, and of seeing her former sphere occupied by a suitable successor.
Armed with an official imprimatur, and encouraged by promise of help from the Viceroy if needful, a subscription list was opened, and, as the result, the London Missionary Society built a well-equipped hospital, the Tientsin Mission Hospital and Dispensary, (under the care of Dr. Mackenzie, and brought to regional prominence by his successor Dr. Fred C. Roberts), with wards for about 40 in-patients, and a medical school attached, the money value of which is about 5,000 taels (£1,500), besides an already considerable endowment fund—the whole of which has come from native sources.
John Goucher of Baltimore), having money which he wished to use in the work, wrote to the Tianjin Committee of the Methodist Episcopal Mission, offering a sum for an orphanage, if desired.
At once the gentleman wrote, undertaking to bear the entire expense of the erection and furnishing of suitable buildings.