Leonora Howard King | |
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 Dr Leonora Howard King | |
| Born | (1851-04-17)April 17, 1851 Farmersville (nowAthens),Canada West |
| Died | June 30, 1925(1925-06-30) (aged 74) |
Leonora Howard King (April 17, 1851 – June 30, 1925) was aCanadian physician and medicalmissionary who spent 47 years practising medicine inChina.[1] She was the first Canadian doctor to work in China, where she died in 1925.[2]
Leonora Annetta Howard was the daughter of Peter T. and Dorothy E. Howard. She was born in Lansdowne, County Leeds,Canada West (Ontario), March 17, 1851. She was raised in Farmersville (nowAthens). She was educated in Athens, Ontario and in New York. She qualified for and served as a teacher.[3]
King was unable to attend medical school in Canada and received her medical degree from theUniversity of Michigan in 1876.[4][5]
After joining the Women's Foreign Missionary Society of theAmerican Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society,[5][6] she left for China in 1877. In China, she was a missionary doctor with the American Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society in the northern Chinese province ofZhili.[7] She took up her residence alongsideLucinda L. Combs, the first female physician to serve in China stationed by the Women's Foreign Missionary Society in Peking around August 1887. The pair worked together for three months before Miss Combs relocated toJiujiang.[8]
In August, 1879, King attended Lady Li, the wife ofViceroy of ZhiliLi Hongzhang, then seriously ill, inTianjin. On Lady Li's recovery, she remained in Tianjin, in practice with the use of a temple being given to her for the purpose. She founded, in Tianjin, the Methodist Episcopal Mission Hospital in 1880. In 1885 King opened a medical school for Chinese women and girls who had been educated in mission schools. In 1886, Lady Li built King another hospital, which was later known as Government Hospital for Women and Children, Tianjin. During theFirst Sino-Japanese War, Dr. Howard opened her hospital to wounded soldiers as opposed to women and children.[3] At the close of the war, King the first Western woman, was made aMandarin[specify] an honour of the Imperial ChineseOrder of the Double Dragon.[1]
In 1884, she married Rev. Alexander King, a member of theLondon Missionary Society.[5][9]
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