Quick Facts
Biography
Zenas Sanford Loftis (11 May 1881 - 12 August 1909) was an American physician who is best known for his work as a medical missionary in Batang, a town in the Sichuan Province of China, during the early 1900s.
He is credited for his contributions to the western's views of the Chinese and Tibetan cultural landscape in the early 1900s because of his photography and detailed written accounts of their religious traditions, geography, and people. While traveling to Batang, he medically assisted people whom he encountered on the road and contributed to the practice of moving away from the common use of opium in China.
Albert Shelton, who was head of the Batang mission, wrote that Loftis "was a man who loved all the beauties of nature and was able to see God on every hand" and felt that Loftis would be a capable replacement for Shelton's position. Upon arrival, Loftis accepted the responsibility of the mission's dispensary until his death from typhus fever and smallpox. His untimely death led to the conversion of "a number of Tibetans" to Christianity, and his image was used as an inspiration for later missionaries to serve.
Early life
Zenas Sanford Loftis was born in Gainesboro, Tennessee as the son of James H. Loftis and Nancy Eveline Loftis. The Loftis family moved onto a farm in rural Kansas when Loftis was seven years of age and later moved to central Texas where Zenas developed his skills in photography and the printer's trade. In 1894 Loftis became a Christian and soon after began his involvement in his local church. At the age of 18, his father died after undergoing health complications with his paralysis, prompting Zenas to become more independent. He entered Vanderbilt University a year later in the Department of Pharmacy and graduated in 1901 while winning the prestigious Founders' medal.
Missionary work
Calling
Loftis's calling to the life of a medical missionary came about in St. Louis while performing slum mission work and teaching Chinese Sunday-school. He was inspired by the work of Susanna Carson Rijnhart who lost both her husband and child while spreading Christianity in Tibet. In response this calling, Loftis moved to Nashville, Tennessee to earn a medical degree within Vanderbilt University's Department of Medicine. Throughout his studies, Loftis prayed to God "that he might be sent to the most difficult and needy field in all the world" and "wanted to go where no one else was willing to go." In 1906, Loftis was sent by Vanderbilt University to the Southern Student's Y.M.C.A conference in Asheville, North Carolina where Loftis first heard of the needy in Tibet.
Appointment
In 1903, Dr. Susanna Carson Rijnhart, Dr. Albert Shelton, and Flora Shelton were sent by the Foreign Christian Missionary Society of Cincinnati to open a mission in Tibet. However, Dr. Rijnhart eventually extracted from Tibet after dealing with health problems. After learning of Dr. Rijnhart's withdrawal from the mission on the border of Tibet, Loftis applied for and was appointed to the mission in Batang by the Foreign Christian Missionary Society of Cincinnati in January 1908.
Journey
Loftis's route from the United States to Tibet required that he make stops at San Francisco, Honolulu, Yokohama, Nagasaki, Shanghai, and Nanjing. After reaching Nanjing, Loftis had to travel up the Yangtze River, pass through Hankou, Yichang, Chungking, Luchau, Kiating, Tahcienlu, and Litang to reach Batang.
He boarded the SS Mongolia on September 15, 1908 and left the United States, never to return. He wrote in his diary that he felt "no sorrow in [his] heart" as the country held "all that was dear to [him] except [his] work.
Experience of Chinese and Tibetan culture
As he traveled through China and Tibet, Loftis recorded his observations of the Chinese and Tibetan cultural landscape, providing context to many of the customs and historical landmarks that he encountered. On the way to Nanjing, he described the "thousands of graves" that covered the fields and detailed the cultural and historical context behind the "great stone statues" that lay along the road that he traveled. Along the Yangtze River, Loftis observed an "artificial cave" home to an ancient "aboriginal race" and entered one of them, concluding that they were "the first dwellings" of Tibetan ancestors. He also recorded historical analyses about the Purple Mountain, Omei Shan, and a bridge that hovered over the Tong River.
Loftis's exposure to the practices of the Buddist Tibetan people is unlike that of the Western travelers prior to him. The religious icons of the Tibetan people were numerous, and Loftis saw "shrines with many prayer wheels and idols." He listened to the "chanting prayers of lamas" and looked at "devout Tibetans" whirling "prayer drums ... thus offering millions of prayers in one second." Loftis stumbled upon one prayer drum with "some half million or more written mani prayers."
These sights sickened Loftis who was a harsh critic of the Tibetan people's Buddhist traditions. He wrote, "It struck chills to my heart when I saw these deluded wretches groping so blindly in the dark for help from a higher power." Loftis had further opportunities to see the religious practices of the Tibetan people within the "Holy City" of Lhasa. It was there where Loftis became one of the "first foreigners" to ever visit and stay at the Litang monastery and to enter their Holy Temple. Loftis became one of the few westerners who interacted with an abbot at the Holy City who was said to be "a Living Buddha" and from whom Loftis learned about the Kangyur.
Loftis was a major critic of the hygiene of the Chinese and highlighted the major health hazards found throughout the country. He stated in his diary that they did not "know what a sewer is, so everything that is waste [was] thrown into the streets." He was particularly unfavorable of the Chinese inns, describing one as having "four verminous beds" with "inevitable foul smelling pits of human refuse. Conditions were similar in Tibet where Loftis encountered inns that were "dirty and foul beyond belief." Along the Yalong River, he described an inn which had "cracks in the walls" that were "filled with their eggs and larva" in addition to the major presence of "bedbugs, fleas, and lice."
The superstitious nature of the Chinese was well-documented by Loftis who noted one night that "they make a lot of noise with drums and gongs all night to keep the devils off." As he was traveling up the Yangtze River, he writes that the "Chinese believe the river to be infested with devils." Loftis characterized himself as a "foreign devil" as a crowd was staring as he tore into his food with "knives and forks."
Healthcare
Loftis made a concerted effort to visit the missions that he passed by on the way to the Batang mission, and he documented their progress and conditions. He noted that many of the stations were "terribly undermanned" and regretted that "he could not multiply himself into a hundred" to aid the missions.
Several opportunities to treat patients arose along the way to Batang, allowing Loftis to enhance the general health of the Chinese and Tibetan people. On the road, Loftis treated a man who attempted to commit an opium suicide and was received with "profuse thanks" for his work. While traveling up the Yangtze River, he diagnosed and remedied a case of malaria, allowing him the opportunity to "make a demonstration of the power of foreign medicine." In Yachow, he treated a case of opium in a young girl. Near one of the Tibetan villages, he alleviated the pain of a "contused and swollen" sclera conjunctiva." In Tachienlu, he performed an amputation on part of a finger.
Batang mission
Loftis reached the Batang mission on June 17, 1909, a whole month sooner than his expected time of arrival. He was welcomed at the mission by Dr. Albert Shelton and Mr. James Ogden.
Albert Shelton left the responsibility of the mission's dispensary to Loftis while Dr. Shelton and Mr. Ogden were on an extended trip to the southern region of Batang. Loftis treated patients around the area in whatever capacity was needed including attending to dislocations, opium overdose, tuberculosis, skin lacerations, pediatrics, and smallpox. Loftis noted that the Tibetan people "knew nothing about dislocations," and a man with a dislocated shoulder whom Loftis had treated "praised the skill of the foreign doctor." He treated "between five and six hundred people."
Death
Not long after Loftis's arrival at the Batang mission, he told his colleagues that he was not feeling well. Dr. Albert Shelton noted that Loftis had attended to two patients with smallpox and suspected that Loftis may have caught the disease. Although Loftis was vaccinated, his condition gradually worsened. Shelton observed that his smallpox "was raging everywhere." Loftis inherited Typhus fever while battling smallpox, which only exacerbated his condition. Unable to obtain a vaccine, Shelton isolated himself with his colleague until Loftis perished at the age of 28 at four o' clock one afternoon. Loftis was buried next to the grave of William Soutter, a Christian missionary. Loftis's grave faces the road to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Engraved on his grave is the quote, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." In addition, the third stanza from the poem Break, Break, Break by Alfred, Lord Tennyson is written in English, Tibetan, and Chinese on Loftis's tomb.
Legacy
Despite being present at the Batang mission for only six weeks, Loftis's contributions to the medical mission in Tibet are significant. Dr. Albert Shelton recorded that Loftis, in the brief period that he was in Batang, "had completely captured the hearts of the children of the Missions," and one patient particularly "would wait and let Dr. Loftis" see her ailments. Notably, the Loftis Memorial Hospital was named by his colleagues in his honor.
Flora Shelton noted that "by his death he brought the mission fifty years nearer completion in that raw land than otherwise it would have been." Dr. William M. Hardy quickly replaced Loftis, and many more missionaries followed in suit which allowed "a number of Tibetans" to be converted "as a result of Dr. Loftis's death." The missionaries resumed work in Tibet until tensions rose between Tibet and China in 1932.
His diaries were used internationally to motivate missionaries to come to China. When Loftis reached Sanba en route to the Batang mission, he came across the grave of the martyred Christian Missionary William Soutter. After seeing the grave, Loftis wrote in his diary, "O my Master, if it is Thy will that I fill a lonely grave in this land, may it be one that will be a landmark, and an inspiration to others, and may I go to do it willingly, if it is Thy will." His desires manifested themselves postmortem as the Foreign Christian Missionary and other organizations used Loftis's story in their published literature to recruit medical missionaries. This was aided by an increased circulation of advertisements of Loftis's diary, which promulgated his mission as well as his written observations of China and Tibet to the western world.