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- [S062843847126] Caroline Gurney.
- [S62843847127] Journal, British Medical Journal, 4 February 1961, Page 368.
B C Broomhall, FRCS. Mr. B. C. Broomhall, who was for many years a medical missionary in China, died at his home at Redlynch, near Salisbury, on January 2. He was 85 years of age.
Benjamin Charles Broomhall was born at Godalming, Surrey, on March 16, 1875, the youngest son of Benjamin Broomhall, of the China Inland Mission, an energetic protagonist in the anti-opium campaign. On leaving the City of London School he embarked on a business career, but soon realized that his vocation was to become a medical missionary in China, where the inland provinces were rapidly opening to intercourse with the outside world. With this in view he trained at the London Hospital and in 1900 qualified M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. Two years later he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. After qualification he held the appointments of resident medical officer at the Mildmay Cottage Hospital, Bethnal Green, and house-surgeon at the London Hospital and at St. Mark's Hospital, London. He sailed for China in 1903 and settled in T'ai-Yuan-Fu, in the province of
Shansi, in North China, where he hoped to carry on the work of Dr. A. E. Lovitt, one of the fifty missionaries massacred in T'ai-Yuan-Fu during the Boxer Rising. He returned to England during the first world war, and was appointed to the Graylingwell Military Hospital, Chichester. Then followed a brief period in private practice at Garstang, Lancashire, where he was also medical officer of health for the rural district, before he went back to China in 1920, being stationed in Sianfu, in the province of Shensi. In recognition of his services to the Chinese people he was awarded the Order of the Double Dragon by the last Emperor of China in 1910, the Army and Navy Medal by the first President of the Republic of China in 1911, and the Medal of the Golden Grain by Yen-Shi-San, the governor of the model province of Shansi, in 1916. He finally left China in 1931. After being in private practice in Dulwich Village, London, from 1932 to 1939, he retired to Redlynch, where for several years he was occupied with war work and medical boards. A widower since 1952, Dr. Broomhall leaves two sons, one of whom is a medical missionary in the Philippines, and four daughters.
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