Ida Kahn
Chinese doctor
Ida Kahn (simplified Chinese: 康爱德; traditional Chinese: 康愛德; December 6, 1873—November 9, 1931), born Kang Cheng (Chinese: 康成), was a Chinese medical doctor who, along with Mary Stone, operated dispensaries and hospitals in China from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Kahn was most known for expanding the presence of Chinese women in the workforce. This work, along with that of her colleague Mary Stone, established the first corps of Chinese women medical professionals.
Early life
Ida Kahn was born on December 6, 1873, in Jiujiang, Jiangxi, China, the sixth girl in the family. After her parents failed to betroth her, they became convinced by an "unfavorable horoscope" that she was bad luck. Consequently, Kahn's father gave her up for adoption, and his employer, Gertrude Howe, adopted her and renamed her Ida Kahn.
Howe was a member of the Women's Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS), the women's board of the Methodist Episcopal Church; an organization that Kahn would keep close ties with as she pursued her missionary work. From a young age, Kahn learned English, and worked as a translator for foreign doctors. Due to her adoptive mother's faith, Kahn grew up Christian, an element that became a defining characteristic of her missionary work. Kahn remained active within the WFMS, and drew upon the organization for financial support of her hospital and dispensaries.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ida Kahn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.