Page 17 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

5

his discouraging experiences at Basrah, it also broughttto

the fore several basic problems facing the Mission. In the

first place, Zwemer had no formal medical training and the

complexity and sheer volume of medical cases to be treated

had overwhelmed him. Properly trained, qualified medical prac-

ticioners were needed if the medical work was to be continued.

In the second place, his Bahrain experience reinforced the

lesson of his set-backs at Basrah by pointing out that the

Arabs were as unreceptivetto evangelism as they were eager

for medical missionaries. By concentrating on their medical

work, the missionaries were being lured further and further

away from their central goal "the evangelization of Arabia."

The first problem was the easier of the two to handle,

and an active recruiting effort back in the States soon pro­

vided the necessary doctors and nurses to staff an ambitious

medical program. By 1898 the mission was able to open a full
'•O''
time dispensary in Bahrain under the care of Dr. and Mrs. Eh

Sharon Thoms. Three years later, the mission opened the first

hospital in the Gulf at Bahrain, and, by 1914, the mission

was treating over 23,000 patients a year in its five hospitals
in Bahrain, Basrah, Kuwait and Muscat. (There were two sepa­

rate clinics in Kuwait, one for men and one for women).16

There was surprisingly little difficulty in gaining

acceptance for the medical missions. Heavily veiled Moslem

women were permitted by their otherwise wary and jealous

husbands to be treated at the Mission clinics, and new and
unfamiliar sanitary regulations in the hospitals were quickly

7!"