From the outset the doctor’s ideal has been to make the medical work as largely self-supporting as possible.  Of course many of those most in need of medical aid could pay nothing for it, nor for their medicines, nor even, if they were in-patients, for their food.  Others, however, could pay something, and still others were able to pay in full.  Soon after work in the Danforth Hospital was begun, Dr. Stone wrote:  “Our ordinary charge for food is sixty cash a day or two dollars per month.  For private rooms they pay ten to twenty dollars, according to the kind of room they have.  Occasionally we meet some generous Chinese who give freely and thus help a great deal our poor patients, some of whom cannot even pay for their rice.  For instance, one man has paid three hundred dollars this year for his wife, who is still here for treatment, and will probably give more when she is through.  Another man has given one hundred and forty dollars for his wife’s treatment.  Last quarter we received over four hundred dollars, and this quarter over five hundred dollars here.  We are getting to have more of the well-to-do patients.”

A letter written in 1905 tells of ways in which the Chinese assist the hospital financially:  “It has been my privilege to minister unto many of this poor class of people with the fees I receive from the rich.  So often I find in the morning I earn a good fee, and in the evening I spend it on a very poor case.  Lately I have been sending a subscription book around.  I first sent it to the highest official here, and it was immediately returned with fifty dollars.  It encouraged me very much, for I know the work is approved of by the officials and the common people, and they are both helping all they can.”  Once she reported that at a time when the financial outlook was unusually discouraging, an unknown non-Christian Chinese sent a messenger several hundred li with a gift of money to relieve the situation.

Patients who cannot afford to pay anything, but who can use their hands, are given sewing to do, and in this way make some contribution toward the expenses of the work.  The nurses, too, who have received training from the hospital, either give their services or the money which they receive from private cases.  Thus, in various ways, many of the running expenses are met on the field, but as so much work is done for the poor, the physician’s salary and the larger part of the equipment have come from friends in America.

Even in the interior of China, and in the midst of the most active of lives, Dr. Stone has never ceased to be a student.  Early in her work she wrote to a friend in America who was also a physician, “We feel that in order to keep up in our profession we need occasionally some of the latest works, especially since medical science is one of the most progressive of all.”  Subsequent letters are full of commissions such as, “I need an English and Latin dictionary very much in the work.  Will you