Edward H. and Lotta C. Hume papers

Edward Hicks Hume, physician and educator, was born on May 13, 1876, in Ahmednagar, India, the son of Congregational missionaries Edward S. and Charlotte E. Hume. He received his B.A. from Yale University in 1897 and his M.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1901. After post-graduate work at the University of Liverpool and a residency at Johns Hopkins, Hume was appointed acting assistant surgeon with the United States Public Health Service in Bombay, India, in 1903. Before leaving for India, he married Lotta Carswell of Baltimore.

In 1905 Hume accepted an appointment to the Yale Mission in Changsha, China, where he organized the Yale Mission hospital. He served as senior physician of the hospital from 1906 to 1923. In 1914 Hume founded Hsiang-Ya (Hunan-Yale) Medical College after reaching an agreement with the governor of Hunan to cooperate in sponsoring medical education in the form of a new hospital and medical school. He served as dean of the school and professor of medicine until 1927. From 1923 to 1927 he was President of the Colleges (academic and medical) of Yale-in-China. He also served the Yale-in-China Association in several other capacities, including President of the Association (1934-1936), Vice-President (1955-1957), and Trustee (1927-1954).

In 1927 Hume resigned his offices at Hsiang-Ya and returned to the United States, where he became director and executive vice-president of the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital. Under his leadership, the school and hospital became part of Columbia University. From 1934 to 1937 he conducted a survey of medical facilities for the Chinese National Health Administration and in 1938 performed a similar service in India. A founder of the Christian Medical Council for Overseas Work, Hume was secretary of the organization from 1938 to 1946.

Among the organizations and institutions which Hume served as a trustee were the Associated Boards for Christian Colleges in China, the American Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations, the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Russell Sage College, and Lingnan University. He was the author of The Chinese Way in Medicine (1940), Doctors East, Doctors West (1946), Doctors Courageous (1950), and Dauntless Adventurer (1952). Hume died on February 8, 1957, in Wallingford, Connecticut.

Helen Charlotta Carswell Hume was born on October 3, 1876, in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Lockhart Scott Carswell and C. Annie Buckley Carswell. Called Lotta by her parents, she dropped Helen from her name after her marriage. A graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, she enrolled in a course at the Hartford Theological Seminary and in a probationary course in nursing at Johns Hopkins University after her engagement to Edward H. Hume in 1900.

Following her marriage in 1903, she accompanied her husband to Bombay, India, where he worked for the United States Public Health Service. In 1905 the Humes moved to Changsha in Hunan Province, China, where Edward Hume had been appointed to the Yale Mission staff. In China, Lotta Hume assisted her husband as a nurse and research assistant and later started the first Social Service League in Changsha. She returned to the United States with her husband when he resigned his Yale-in-China appointment in 1927.

Lotta C. Hume was the author of "Lockhart Scott Carswell, a Portrait" (1933); Drama at the Doctor's Gate (1961); Favorite Children's Stories from China and Tibet (1962); and the compiler of Songs Along the Way (1957) by her husband, Edward H. Hume. The Humes had five children: Theodore Carswell (1904-1943); Charlotte Elizabeth Hume Freeman (b. 1906); Margery (1909-1911); Edward Welch (1913-1915); and Kathrina Joy Hume Falk (b. 1917). Lotta Hume died on February 17, 1976, in La Jolla, California.