Despite being of peasant stock from a small village on the southern coast of China, Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), the founder and first provisional president of the Republic of China, was exposed to Western education early in life. Educated first in Hawaii and then in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, he was influenced by Christianity, democracy and liberalism. It was the years of his tertiary education at the Hong Kong College of Medicine that moulded his ultimate destiny as the healer of a nation. This article examines the importance of this medical college and its two stalwarts, Sir Patrick Manson and Sir James Cantlie, in the transformation that shaped China’s modern history.
