The Oldest Medical Mission in the World
THE command to “begin at Jerusalem” was literally observed by the early promoters of medical missions. A medical mission was established in that old city as far back as 1824, and the number of out-patients who visited the English Mission Hospital for Jews at Jerusalem was 12,255, not including dressings16to wounds, sores, etc., which numbered 11,880. The in-patients numbered 879. Many sick Jews had to be refused for lack of room. The patients came from Cairo, Alexandria, Damascus, etc., as well as from Jerusalem. The new hospital which is being built will have forty beds,—fifteen more than the one used at present, which was built in 1832. So still walks through the old city, over which he wept, for which he prayed, in which he worked and died, the Great Healer, working through the branches of himself—“the Vine.”—Selected.