Leonora King

Who was Leonora King?

Leonora Howard King was a Canadian physician and medical missionary who spent 47 years practising medicine in China. She was the first Canadian doctor to work in China.

Leonora Annetta Howard was the daughter of Peter T. and Dorothy E. Howard. She was born in Lansdowne, County Leeds, Canada West, March 17, 1851. She was raised in Farmersville. She was educated in Athens, Ontario and in New York. She qualified for and served as a teacher.

King was unable to attend medical school in Canada and received her medical degree from the University of Michigan in 1876. After joining the Women's Foreign Missionary Society of the American Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society, she left for China in 1877 where she was a missionary doctor with the American Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society in the northern Chinese province of Chihli. She took up her residence in Peking.

In August, 1879, Dr King attended Lady Li, the wife of His Excellency Li Hung Chang, then seriously ill, in Tien-Tsin. On Lady Li's recovery, she remained in Tien-Tsin, in practice with the use of a temple being given to her for the purpose. She founded, in Tien-Tsin, the Methodist Episcopal Mission Hospital in 1880. In 1885 Dr. King opened a medical school for Chinese women and girls who had been educated in mission schools. In 1886, Lady Li built Dr. King another hospital, which was later known as Government Hospital for Women and Children, Tien-Tsin, China. During the war between China and Japan, Dr. Howard opened her hospital to wounded soldiers as opposed to women and children. At the close of the war Dr. King the first Western woman was made a Mandarin an honour of the Imperial Chinese Order of the Double Dragon.