Hannah Riddell (1855–1932) was an English woman who devoted her life to the care of patients with leprosy in Japan.
Constance Watney, MBE, COC, SRN, MBCN, was a British born missionary nurse in Uganda.
Robert Clark (1825–1900), and his colleague Thomas Henry Fitzpatrick, were the first English Church Mission Society (CMS) missionaries in the Punjab. Clark was the first missionary to the Afghans, and was the first agent of the Church to enter the city of Leh.
Sarah Rebecca Parrish known as Dr. Rebecca Parish, was an American medical missionary and physician in the Philippines.
Kate Marsden was a British missionary, explorer, writer and nurse. Supported by Queen Victoria and Empress Maria Feodorovna she investigated a cure for leprosy. She set out on a round trip from Moscow to Siberia to find a cure, creating a leper treatment centre in Siberia.
Fanny Jane Butler was a medical missionary from England who was among the first female doctors to travel to India and the first fully trained doctor from England to do so. Prior to her work in Kashmir and other parts of India, Butler was a part of the first class of the London School of Medicine for Women, becoming a member of the forefront of female doctors. Butler spent seven years in India until her death in 1889 and opened medical dispensaries in Srinagar and Bhagalpur, where no medical facilities had previously existed. Butler also initiated the building of the first hospital in Srinagar in 1888 called the John Bishop Memorial Hospital and provided necessary medical care for Indian women, for whom little care had been available.
Arthur Neve, MD (1859–1919) was a doctor and Christian medical missionary who felt the call to serve abroad early on in life. As a well distinguished medic, Neve willingly left home at a young age when he was called to Kashmir to continue the medical missions of Dr. Theodore Maxwell and Dr. William Elmsie. He moved to Asia and never looked back, soon becoming the head of the Kashmir Medical Mission where he would go on to serve the sick in Kashmir for the next thirty four years by building the Kashmir Mission Hospital with his brother, Ernest. Influenced by his strong roots in his religion, Neve served the people of Kashmir while also spreading his Christian message to a predominantly Muslim and Brahmin area.
Lillian Dickson was an independent missionary, author, and public speaker. She used her maternal identity to develop her vocation in the middle of the twentieth century. Originally, she and her husband, James Dickson (1900-1967), were sent by the Presbyterian Church of Canada, to Taiwan in 1927. Lillian lived and worked in Taiwan until she died, except for the period between 1940 and 1947 when she and her husband were transferred to British Guiana because of growing tensions and war between Japan and the United States. After her return to Taiwan, Lillian eventually developed a long lasting career as an independent missionary. In particular, she founded Mustard Seed International. and The Mustard Seed Mission.
Martha Alma Wall was an American Christian medical missionary, philosopher, nurse, and author who is best known for her humanitarian work providing health care to lepers in British Nigeria during the 1930s and 1940s with the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM). She was born in Hillsboro, Kansas to a traditional Christian family and was a devout member of both the non-denominational Salina Bible Church and the Baptist Women's Union. She became a registered nurse and studied theology at Tabor College before leaving for a medical mission in British Nigeria in 1938. After returning to America, Wall worked as a Clinical Supervisor of Vocational Nurses for Kern General Hospital during the 1950s and as an instructor and director of nursing services for Bakersfield College during the 1960s. Throughout her adult life, she was a dedicated member of the California State Licensed Vocational Nurses Association. Wall is noted as the founder of the Children's Welfare Center at the Katsina Leper Settlement. She documented her missionary work in Sub-Saharan Africa in the book she authored Splinters from an African Log, which was published in 1960.
William Jackson Elmslie was a Scottish Presbyterian doctor working primarily in Kashmir and the Punjab region in India from 1865 to 1872. Sponsored by the Church Missionary Society, Elmslie established Kashmir's first dispensary in Srinagar and later founded a small temporary hospital.
Ernest Frederic Neve (1861-1946) was a British surgeon, Christian medical missionary, and author who provided medical care to the people of Kashmir and pioneered work on Kangri cancer. He established the Kashmir Mission Hospital and the Kashmir State Leper Hospital with his brother Arthur Neve and made significant contributions to the healthcare facilities in Kashmir throughout the over 50 years that he spent there.
Hubert Gordon Thompson was an English surgeon, medical missionary, author, photographer, and explorer. Thompson established a hospital in Kunming, China, that would eventually before a modern Children's Hospital. While working in Shanghai, he performed significant medical research as well as Red Cross wartime relief work.
Norman Cook was a British physician, medical missionary, and evangelist in Northern Nigeria from 1930 to 1933. As a member of the Hausa Band from Cambridge University, Cook was influential in the development of the hospitals and out-patient dispensaries in Zaria and Wusasa and was the leader in the building of the dispensary in Maska. His transfer of the leper colony in Zaria resulted the establishment of the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Training Centre in Zaria, Nigeria in 1991. Cook’s missionary service was brief due to his unexpected death caused by septicaemia in the operating theater.
Leonard E. S. Sharp was an English doctor and surgeon who served as a medical missionary in East Africa from 1914 to 1955. He worked in various regions across Uganda and modern-day Rwanda alongside his longtime professional partner and friend Algernon Stanley Smith. Together, the pair founded the Rwandan Mission and Sharp went on to establish a leper colony on Lake Bunyonyi. He received awards from the british queen Elizabeth II and the Royal African Society for his work.
Edward George Horder was an English medical missionary to China notable for his work with leprosy patients. As a member of the Church Missionary Society (C.M.S.), Horder spent 25 years in the city of Pakhoi–now Beihai–building and operating the first mission hospital in the Guangdong province. In addition to becoming the second-largest C.M.S. mission hospital in China, Horder's Pakhoi mission station was the first institution in the region to treat leprosy patients. Even after Horder's departure, the hospital remained a health center in Beihai and was the site of service for a generation of new missionaries. Although the leper wing closed in 1936, the hospital itself still survives as the Beihai People Hospital.
Edmund Downes (1843–1912) was an English medical missionary in the 19th century who travelled to India on behalf of the Church Missionary Society. After attending Radley College, Downes was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Royal Horse Artillery. Following his deployment to India for 8 years, Downes decided to take up missionary work. Downes is best known for his contributions to the Mission Hospital in Drugjan, Rustum Garhi Hill in the state of Kashmir, where he established the surgical wing, constructed the first building of the mission hospital at the Drugjan hill, and worked to grow the hospital's size. Due to ill-health, Downes returned to England and pursued philanthropic work, notably presiding over his local branch of the YMCA.
Mary Reed (1854-1943) was an American Christian missionary to India. For the first ten years of her career, she worked as a school teacher in her home state of Ohio. In 1884, she went to India as a missionary of the Cincinnati Branch of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and entered upon zenana missions work at Cawnpore. In 1890, she became conscious of a strange physical disability, and thinking that her health was failing, returned to the U.S. on a furlough. While recovering in Cincinnati came the dread suspicion and subsequent discovery that the malady was leprosy. At first, she was overwhelmed with the realization, but she quickly decided to give her life to work among the lepers in India, and her thoughts turned to Pithoragarh, among the foothills of the Himalayas, at the base of Chandag Heights, where a group of lepers lived in whom she had already become interested. Her suspicions as to the nature of her disease were confirmed by every specialist she consulted. She kept the diagnosis a secret, however, from her family, with the exception of one sister, and returned to India in 1891. Proceeding to Pithoragarh, Reed informed her family and friends by letter of her purpose, and her reason for choosing this service. Thereafter, she conducted her important work at Chandag, and built up an institution which in many respects was a model of order and well-arranged facilities. Reed continued to work among the lepers of India until her death in 1943. She was a recipient of the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal.
Leopold George Hill was an English medical missionary who worked as a member of the Church Mission Society (CMS) treating leprosy patients in Pakhoi, China. Hill was motivated to join missionary work by his religious upbringing and intended to treat his patients to not only recover physically but also gain a sense of religious purpose. He worked alongside his wife, Emma Amelia Hill, as well as with other fellow missionaries to continue the work of Dr. Edward Horder's establishment of the Pakhoi leper colony. After retiring from missionary service, Hill continued his contributions to CMS through administrative work as a Physician to the Society.
Harry Hastings was a Presbyterian Scottish physician, surgeon, and medical missionary with the United Free Church of Scotland who served in Nigeria from 1922–1949. Hastings worked primarily at the Uburu Hospital but also in the village of Itu, both in Ogoja Province in Nigeria. Hastings was assisted by his wife, described as a "practical nurse", who accompanied him on his missions to Africa from 1922–1949 and shared responsibility with him in developing clinics to treat leprosy. He also worked with fellow physicians R.M. Macdonald of Scotland and Akanu Ibiam of Nigeria during his time in Uburu. He is known for developing Nigerian staff to run health services without additional foreign missionaries.
Regina Purtell (1866–1950) was an American Roman Catholic sister and United States Army nurse. She cared for Theodore Roosevelt's "Rough Riders", and the media dubbed her "The Florence Nightingale of the Spanish-American War."
