Dr. Stone is so small that she has to stand on a stool to reach her operating table; but Dr. Danforth’s testimony is that she is performing the largest operations known to surgery, and that no Chicago surgeon is doing work superior to hers.  Moreover she has no fellow physicians to assist her in her surgical work.  The most delicate operations, for which an American surgeon would call in the assistance of brother physicians, internes, and the most expert of graduate nurses, are performed by Dr. Stone entirely unaided except for the faithful nurses whom she has herself trained.  Only at rare intervals does she receive a visit from a fellow physician such as Dr. Perkins of New York, who, in an interesting account of his stay at Kiukiang, tells of performing his first major operation “in her operating room and under her direction.”

At first the people were afraid to submit to operations, but the doctor’s marked success with those who permitted her to operate soon overcame their fear.  The results of her skilful use of the knife have been most marvellous to them.  That a young woman of over twenty, who could not be betrothed because of a hare lip reaching into the nose, with a projection of the maxillary bone between the clefts, could be successfully operated on and transformed into a marriageable maiden, seemed nothing short of miraculous.  Nor was it less wonderful to them that an old woman could, by an operation, be relieved of an abdominal tumor from which she had suffered for sixteen years, and which, when removed, weighed fifty-two pounds.  “The people appreciate surgery more and more,” reads one of Dr. Stone’s recent letters.  “A lot of the tuberculosis patients who have seen the quick results from operations want me to operate on their lungs.”

Another large department of Dr. Stone’s work has been the training of her nurses.  This has been an absolute necessity, for, as Dr. Stone said:  “When I found I had to run a hospital with accommodations for 100 beds, and an out-patient department with sometimes 120 patients a day, I at once found I had to multiply myself by training workers.  These workers I selected from various Christian schools with good recommendations as to qualifications.  I do not dare to take into training any one who has failed as a teacher or in any line of work, because nursing is an art still in its embryo.  To succeed in this profession one must not only know how to read and write, but also know arithmetic and some English.”

The course of study which Dr. Stone gives her nurses is about the same as that prescribed by the regular training schools, or hospitals, in America.  To do this she has had to translate several English text-books into Chinese for the use of her students.  The reliable and efficient nurses who have completed the course and are now her trusted assistants in all her work, have amply repaid her for all the time and labour she has expended upon this part of her work.