Benjamin Hobson

Benjamin Hobson
Benjamin Hobson in Guangzhou
Ho-sin
Chinese
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Héxìn Wade–Giles He-hsin Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Hap⁶-seon³ Southern Min Teochew Peng'im Hab⁸-sing³

Benjamin Hobson (1816–1873) was a Protestant medical missionary who served with the London Missionary Society in imperial China during its Qing dynasty. His Treatise on Physiology, reproducing and elaborating on work by William Cheselden, helped revolutionize Chinese and later Japanese medical understanding and treatment.

Hobson was born in 1816 in Welford, Northamptonshire, in England. He graduated from London University with a MB and passed an examination as a MRCS.

Joining the London Missionary Society as a medical missionary to the Qing Empire, he departed with his wife Jane Abbey Hobson and Messrs Legge and Milne on the Eliza Stewart. It left London on July 28, 1839, and reached Anyer on November 12 and Macao on December 18. Assisted by Elijah Bridgman, Hobson found a residence and joined the local Medical Missionary Society. Its hospital reopened on August 1, 1840. When William Lockhart left for Zhoushan at the end of the month and Dr Diver retired from poor health soon afterwards, Hobson was left in sole charge of its operation. In early 1843, he left to establish an MMS hospital in Hong Kong. This opened to patients on June 1 and the demand for its services so outstripped both expectations and capacity that he relied heavily on help from Chinese assistants. This led him to consider how to explain western medical training to the Chinese, then reliant on often pseudoscientific traditional medicine.