A year earlier, 1865, Dr. James Maxwell aged 30, an Edinburgh graduate, had arrived in Takao, a missionary doctor sent out by the Presbyterian Church of England. He had pressed on to Tianan City, about 30 miles north to start work. But the xenophobia was so intense that he was forced to retire at once to Takao- where he stayed and opened a small hospital there. The wife of British consul, Robert Swinhoe, was the only European woman in Takao, and pregnant at that Maxwell was there to attend to her confinement.

The following year when Patrick Manson arrived, Maxwell asked him to help in his hospital Manson was glad to accept, and relished the opportunity of learning about local diseases. He had an inquiring mind and recorded his obsevations on various diseases he had never seen before such as beriberi elephantiasis and leprosy. He had great energy and traveled into the country, even visiting the aboriginals. These two men brought scientific medicine to Taiwan. Their names are in the textbooks in the history of medicine in Taiwan which medical students now read.

The community doctors in Takao and Tamsui, of whom Manon is an example were, as we shall see men of wide humanity and keen inquiry, Besides their regular work they were drawn willy-nilly into contacts with the indigenous people and their sicknesses.

The missionary doctors, of whom Maxwell is an example, were men and women disease among the Taiwanese as part of an overall medical, charitable, educational and evangelical strategy. In the early days they bore the brunt of opposition and misunderstanding – the fury of the masses who, through the policy of their masters had, for centuries, had no contact with the outside world and regarded all foreigners as barbarians.

But the missionaries learnt the language and offered cures for illnesses, which traditional medicine could not touch, and so opposition was gradually dispelled.

In 1868 came the parting of ways. James Maxwell moved to Tianan, the then capital, and this time with no opposition opened a hospital, which, with a church, became the center of Presbyterian Mission in the southern half of the island. The hospital stands now, a 500 bed modern hospital &nslash; historically the earliest still in operation in the island.