Mary Bird (medical missionary)
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Bird relates in her book ''Persian Women and Their Creed'' that for the first several months of her stay in Iran she devoted herself to learning the Persian and Arabic languages. After this, she attempted to build relationships with Persian women but was for the most part rejected by the community. Bird faced many similar female hardships as [[Teresa Kearney]]. When she used her limited first aid skills to cure a small boy of [[malaria]], however, she quickly grew fame as a doctor. In England, she had been considered too weak to work in medicine but Bird saw it as her duty to provide what medical care she could even though she had received no formal training. Bird had medical books sent from England and spent many hours in study to improve her skills. Qualified doctors and nurses after observing Bird's work commended her medical abilities. One doctor commented, “If she had made medicine her profession, she would have been in the front rank of women doctors. She worked with me . . . and I had the very greatest admiration for her work as a ‘doctor.’” Rice, Clara C., ''Mary Bird in Persia'', London: Church Missionary Society, Salisbury Square, E.C. 1916, p. 113. Medical work provided a strategic base for [[evangelism]] and Bird opened a small [[dispensary]] in [[Isfahan]] in 1894. |
Bird relates in her book ''Persian Women and Their Creed'' that for the first several months of her stay in Iran she devoted herself to learning the Persian and Arabic languages. After this, she attempted to build relationships with Persian women but was for the most part rejected by the community. Bird faced many similar female hardships as [[Teresa Kearney]]. When she used her limited first aid skills to cure a small boy of [[malaria]], however, she quickly grew fame as a doctor. In England, she had been considered too weak to work in medicine but Bird saw it as her duty to provide what medical care she could even though she had received no formal training. Bird had medical books sent from England and spent many hours in study to improve her skills. Qualified doctors and nurses after observing Bird's work commended her medical abilities. One doctor commented, “If she had made medicine her profession, she would have been in the front rank of women doctors. She worked with me . . . and I had the very greatest admiration for her work as a ‘doctor.’” Rice, Clara C., ''Mary Bird in Persia'', London: Church Missionary Society, Salisbury Square, E.C. 1916, p. 113. Medical work provided a strategic base for [[evangelism]] and Bird opened a small [[dispensary]] in [[Isfahan]] in 1894. |
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Bird most often worked alone but took every opportunity to work with foreign doctors. In 1897 Dr. [[Emmeline Stuart]] took over Bird’s work in Isfahan leaving Bird free to open dispensaries in [[Yezd]] and then in [[Kerman]]. Bird even expressed working with another medical missionary doctor, [[John Orlando Summerhayes]], in Kerman and praised him.{{Cite web |title=Mary Bird in Persia / by Clara C. Rice |
Bird most often worked alone but took every opportunity to work with foreign doctors. In 1897 Dr. [[Emmeline Stuart]] took over Bird’s work in Isfahan leaving Bird free to open dispensaries in [[Yezd]] and then in [[Kerman]]. Bird even expressed working with another medical missionary doctor, [[John Orlando Summerhayes]], in Kerman and praised him.{{Cite web |title=Mary Bird in Persia / by Clara C. Rice; with a foreword by C. H. Stileman |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t3125sj25 |access-date=2024-11-27 |website=HathiTrust |language=en}} In the last three and a half years of Bird’s time in Iran, ten doctors and six nurses had taken over her work in Isfahan, Yezd, and Kerman. Bird appreciated this because it gave her greater time for teaching and evangelizing. |
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=== Opposition === |
=== Opposition === |
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