Thomas Richardson Colledge

Thomas Richardson Colledge (1797 to 1879) was an English surgeon with the East India Company at Guangzhou, then called Canton, and is remembered as the first part-time medical missionary in China. Trained under Sir Astley Cooper, he practised in Canton, Macau and other Chinese ports and served as superintending surgeon of the hospitals for British seamen. In 1827 he opened an infirmary for Chinese patients that became known as Colledge's Ophthalmic Hospital. In 1837 he founded the Medical Missionary Society in China and served as its president until his death, and he mentored the American surgeon Peter Parker, who became the first full-time medical missionary to the Chinese. He took an MD at Aberdeen in 1839, returned to England in 1841 when his consular post was abolished, later held fellowships at Edinburgh and London, and spent his last decades in Cheltenham.