| Thank
You So Much, Dr. Landsborough |
 |
By Lai
Chi-wan,
Vice Superintendent of Tzu Chi General Hospital
Translated by Liao Yi-chen
On
the afternoon of February 28, I stood on the platform of the Hualien
train station waiting with great excitement for the arrival of
Dr. David Landsborough, former president of Changhua Christian
Hospital in central Taiwan. Three years ago, when I was still
living and working in the United States, I traveled to Great Britain
to visit the doctor who had done so much good for the people of
Taiwan. Being a stranger to the country, I was muddleheaded enough
to take the wrong train. As a result, the old doctor had to wait
for me in the train station for several hours!
At the age of 86, Dr. Landsborough still looked
energetic and full of vitality as he got off the train in Hualien.
After an exchange of greetings, he showed great interest in hearing
me talk about my experience at Tzu Chi Hospital and was eager
to have a look at our work environment. Above all, he was very
glad to have an opportunity to call on Master Cheng Yen.
Love for the land and the people
Because I was still new to the city of Hualien
myself and had not yet been to the district where the doctor's
hotel was located, my wife and I arrived at the hotel much earlier
than anticipated. To our surprise, he was already waiting. Since
we were in no rush, we took a brief walk through nearby fields.
Dr. Landsborough knows the plants and flowers
of Taiwan very well. Like showing off family treasures, he told
us the characteristics of the various trees or the name of this
or that flower. Even the water buffalo standing by the road reminded
him of his childhood in Taiwan.
Getting to the Abode of Still Thoughts ten
minutes or so before our appointment time, Dr. Landsborough courteously
insisted on not entering the reception room ahead of schedule.
As we took a casual walk around the garden, he pointed to a bodhi
tree. He figured it was a tree related to Buddhism, though he
had forgotten its name. When hearing a bird singing, he judged
it to be a bulbul, called bei tao ko ah ("white head")
in Taiwanese. Since I had recently joined a bird-watching club,
I could show off by pointing out to him that the bulbul in southeastern
Taiwan was actually black-headed. He listened to me with great
interest.
Seeing many tourists visiting the Abode, he
also asked questions about Tzu Chi. I could tell he had done extensive
reading on Tzu Chi before coming here.
The meeting of Dr. Landsborough and Master
Cheng Yen, two winners of the Taiwanese Medical Contribution Award,
was a historic event. Both expressed their mutual admiration for
each other and both modestly attributed their achievements to
the assistance of others.
Although Dr. Landsborough had retired and gone
back to Great Britain in 1980, he was still able to chat with
Master Cheng Yen in fluent Taiwanese, even using literary words
such as gao buei (friendship) and fu jin lang (wife), which are
uncommon nowadays. If you closed your eyes when listening to his
Taiwanese, you would never think that it was spoken by a silver-haired,
blue-eyed European.
Chen Mei-ling, president of the Skin Graft
with Love Foundation, which was founded in memory of Dr. Landsborough,
told us that the doctor used to love to set animals free. Ms.
Chen repeated a story that the doctor's wife, Dr. Jean Murray
Landsborough, had once told her. The doctor and his family once
spent a vacation in Little Liuchiu, Pingtung County, where many
inhabitants made their living by catching and selling birds. Whenever
he came across someone selling birds, Dr. Landsborough would buy
all the birds and set them free. At one point, they saw two men
coming along the road, carrying a wild boar that they had trapped.
For fear that Dr. Landsborough would buy such a big, dangerous
animal and have it released, his wife quickly told her son and
daughter-in-law to lead their father in a different direction.
The episode made us burst out in laughter.
Master Cheng Yen also recalled her own experience
of buying and releasing shrikes waiting to be barbecued in Pingtung.
Though the doctor and the Master believe in different religions,
they share the same passionate love for the island of Taiwan,
its people and its environment.
Their conversation made me recall something
the Master had told me during a visit last year. A professor returning
from the United States asked her whether there would be any problem
if he, a Christian, were to teach in the Tzu Chi College of Medicine.
"I'd only worry about you not being totally faithful to your
religion," the Master told him. "As long as you hold
to your faith, we are all the same."
How to be a good doctor
After leaving the Abode, we headed for the
Tzu Chi College of Medicine and Humanities. On the way, I asked
Dr. Landsborough to tell me more about a widely known story of
a skin graft done by his father, Dr. David Landsborough III, the
founder of Changhua Christian Hospital.
The doctor explained that it all started when
his father was treating a boy who was not recovering from a badly
infected wound. Because the boy did not have enough skin for a
transplant, the doctor's wife insisted on having four pieces of
skin from her thigh grafted onto the boy's wound.
This happened when Dr. Landsborough was fourteen
years old and was attending a high school in Shandong Province
in mainland China. Not until he went back to Taiwan for his summer
vacation did he see the four long scars on his mother's leg. The
Taiwanese boy who received the skin graft later became a Christian
minister.
At the Tzu Chi medical college, Dr. Landsborough
gave a presentation entitled "How to Be a Good Doctor,"
mixing English with Taiwanese during his one-hour speech. To stress
the importance of respecting one's patients, he quoted from the
Hippocratic Oath. This oath, said to have been conceived by the
famous ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, is taken by doctors
after completing their medical training. Dr. Landsborough also
talked about the duties of a physician as discussed by Dr. Sun
Su-miao, the father of medicine in China. Dr. Sun believed that
a doctor should show mercy for the sick and pledge himself to
relieve suffering among all classes. It is a great mistake for
a doctor to boast or to slander other physicians.
Dr. Landsborough also had discussions with
the students about patients' rights as emphasized by the Declaration
of Geneva, which was formulated by the general assembly of the
World Medical Association in 1948, and which was added to the
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was
passed in the same year.
The doctor said, "A machine cannot show
kindness and radiation cannot show sympathy." A doctor needs
a lot of human qualities when seeing his patients: compassion,
kindness, patience, calmness, equanimity, a willingness to listen,
a respect for the patient as a person, and a concern for mankind.
To encourage the students, Dr. Landsborough
cited examples of humanitarian work done in Taiwan. He also mentioned
the work done by Dr. Albert Schweitzer and by Princess Diana,
who called the attention of the world to victims of landmines.
Lastly, he invited the students in the audience
to seriously ask themselves why they had decided to enter medical
school. Was it to make money? For the intellectual stimulus of
medical knowledge? "There is nothing wrong with either,"
he said, "but it is not enough. There are people with special
needs!" He reminded them to care about the forgotten people
of society, the prisoners or the aborigines whose medical and
health needs were not adequately met. "The humanitarian side
of medical practice is timeless--it is always there!"
Make this a better world
After
the speech, we took the doctor to look around our library. He
was particularly interested in our special section on Taiwan's
aboriginal people and the graduate school for aborigines. His
concern for Taiwan's aboriginal population was obvious. Afterwards
we toured the department of anatomy and visited the classrooms
where tea ceremony and flower arrangement are taught. The humanitarian
education of Tzu Chi left a profound impression on the doctor.
Passing by the restaurant, I pointed out to
him that all the people in the college and in the hospital, including
the medical staff, teachers and students, bring their own tableware
to the cafeteria instead of using disposable bowls and chopsticks,
which are so common in Taiwan now. They do this in order to reduce
the amount of garbage and to improve the environment. After meals,
people wash their dishes in sinks outside the cafeteria. This
concrete action of caring for the environment was greatly appreciated
by the doctor.
Finally, it was time to say farewell. Before
he left, Doctor Landsborough said to me, "I am so happy to
see that you have found a place that suits you." On my way
back from the train station, I remembered the feelings I had confessed
to him three years ago: I had mentioned that even though he and
his father, two generations of Landsboroughs, had come from the
United Kingdom, they had dedicated most of their lives to Taiwan,
while I, who had been born and raised on this island, taught American
students and treated American patients. Compared to them, I was
ashamed for not doing something for my own homeland.
At that time, Dr. Landsborough patted me gently
on the shoulder and comforted me. "I received my education
in Great Britain and served in Taiwan. You were educated in Taiwan
and served in the United States. Isn't it wonderful? In this way,
the world can be a much better place." I will never forget
the sincerity on his face when he said these words.
My visit to Dr. Landsborough in England
three years ago had a great impact on me and influenced my decision
to return home and settle down. As a result, his visit to Hualien
had a profound meaning for me. Thank you so much, Dr. Landsborough!
