Medical missions proliferated across Britain from the 1870s, yet it was in the slum districts of Edinburgh that the medical missionary movement was truly born, several decades earlier. While local authorities were slow to respond to health problems created by poverty in Edinburgh’s Old Town, individuals associated with EMMS were active participants in attempting to remedy this, most notably Peter Handyside FRCSEd, one of the Society’s founders. His enterprise would be held as a standard for future missions throughout Britain and overseas.
In 1853, Handyside founded a dispensary in a “dingy garret-room” as the Missionary Dispensary and Hospital for the Irish Poor, serving the city’s Cowgate, West Port and Grassmarket areas, “one of the worst quarters of town”. However, the site proved too small to meet demand, and the surgeon found new premises in 1858 at an old whisky shop at 39 Cowgate, re-opening as the Medical Mission Dispensary and Training Institution. (At this point EMMS was not officially part of Handyside’s enterprise, although the two activities were brought together in 1861).
In its first year of operation, the Dispensary proved so popular that patient numbers increased five-fold and the premises were expanded. After the notable medical missionary David Livingstone died, the name of the Dispensary changed in 1877 to the Livingstone Medical Mission Training Institution.
To give an idea of the medical work undertaken at the Institution, for the year 1894-95 nearly 3000 surgical dressings or operations were carried out and there were 11, 000 first attendances (including patients visited in their own home, gynaecological, paediatric and midwifery attendances and smallpox vaccination clinics). After a state of the art extension in 1903, the work of the Dispensary continued and expanded well into the twentieth century, even after the slum clearances of the 1930s. It finally closed its doors in 1952, in part as a response to the creation of the NHS which now provided free services to the poor.
Philanthropic as well as medical activities underpinned EMMS’ work, through the provision of entertainment, a toddler’s playgroup, and the distribution of clothes, food and linen donations by Dispensary staff. Of course there was also a spiritual dimension to the work of the doctors and students - or preaching healers - connected with EMMS. Bible classes were offered and evangelistic open-air meetings held, with Dispensary students enlisting attendees by knocking on the door of locals. These meetings were not always appreciated by residents who were known to throw buckets of water over speakers from their tenements!
