John Dudgeon

Who was John Dudgeon?

John Dudgeon was a Scottish physician who spent nearly 40 years in China as a doctor, surgeon, translator, and medical missionary.

Dudgeon attended the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, in the latter of which he graduated M.D. and Master of Surgery in 1862. In 1863, he was appointed to the Medical Mission of the London Missionary Society to serve at the hospital in Peking established by William Lockhart, arriving in China in December 1863. He was also Medical Attendant to the British Legation in Peking from 1864-1868. Dudgeon was appointed Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at the Imperial College during the 1870s and 1880s. In Wanderings in China, Constance Frederica Gordon Cumming wrote:

Even when the health of the city is at its normal condition the cares of such a hospital as this are serious, and to me it is a source of amazement how Dr. Dudgeon gets through his daily work. To begin with he must personally prescribe for, on an average, 120 hospital patients every morning, besides an extensive outside practice, which includes several of the foreign Legations, and involves driving long distances in the blazing heat and in the horrible springless carts.