The period between 1865 and 1914 witnessed concurrently the transformation of medicine and hospital architecture in Europe and North America and the rise of Protestant medical mission work overseas. Influential in the emergence of the latter was also a shared conviction among many Protestant missionary societies that administrating medicine was the best method for gaining people’s trust, affection and friendship. This shared conviction emerged from a century of mission work marked by failure and frustration. Although the medical missionaries were not alone in talking about gaining local people’s trust and affection, they certainly undertook work on a scale and in places that not only colonial officials but also missionaries themselves could have only dreamed of. By the second decade of the twentieth century, medical missions could be found in large numbers in Asia and Africa. Among the British missionary societies, the CMS took the lead in this regard in Persia and north-western British India, establishing a total of twelve medical missions by 1914.

Through focusing on the issue of gaining trust, affection or friendship, this study has made a case for examining medical mission work under the motto of affecting bodies, saving souls rather than healing bodies, saving souls. In making this interpretive shift, this study has drawn on methodological approaches offered by the field of the history of emotions. In so doing, it has demanded refocusing the attention from medical missions as either sentimental or coercive towards medical missions as emotional setups that served to change the sensory relationship between missionaries and local people. Viewing medical missions in this way has also demanded considering the missionaries, local people, the (built) environment, smell, sound and touch side by side. These points were explored by focusing on five key themes: dispensary and itineration works, the architecture of mission hospitals, hospital visiting and family wards, women’s work and women’s hospitals and the interaction between mission and empire.

I have highlighted that the story of a mission hospital began with itineration tours, dispensaries and local converted buildings that were established before constructing a permanent and purpose-built structure.