Christian Missionaries and Medical Services in Murshidabad District of Erstwhile Bengal Province

The contribution of Christian missionaries to the development of medical services in India, particularly in Bengal, occupies a significant place in colonial social history. Missionaries were among the earliest proponents of what later came to be known as “health missions,” integrating medical care with broader humanitarian and evangelical objectives. This paper examines the role of Christian missionaries in the evolution of medical services in the Murshidabad district between 1772 and 1946, with particular emphasis on the establishment and functioning of the London Missionary Hospital at Jiaganj in 1894 under the leadership of Dr. Lucy. The Jiaganj hospital, popularly known as “Hawker’s Hospital,” emerged as one of the most reputed charitable medical institutions in rural India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It provided modern medical treatment to economically and socially marginalized populations while maintaining exceptionally high standards of cleanliness and patient care. Beyond curative services, the missionaries played a transformative role in training local women as nurses and midwives, thereby professionalizing a vocation that had long been stigmatized in Indian society. Although missionary administration formally ended in the mid-twentieth century, the institutional legacy of these initiatives continues through government-run and private healthcare and nursing education facilities in Murshidabad. This study evaluates the humanitarian, social, and institutional impact of missionary medical services while critically engaging with the underlying objectives of social transformation and religious conversion. It argues that missionary medicine functioned as a crucial bridge between pre-colonial indigenous healthcare practices and the modern public health infrastructure that exists in the district today.