Phebe Stone

Phebe Stone (1891 – May 1930) was a physician and medical missionary who worked in Kiukiang (Jiujiang), China. She was the younger sister of the notable missionary Mary Stone, also known as Shi Meiyu. Her family was from the Hubei province in China and were one of a handful of Christians in the area. Stone went on to Goucher College in the United States for her undergraduate degree and later was awarded a fellowship to attend Johns Hopkins, where she received medical degree in 1918. Stone was the first Chinese woman to graduate from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Afterward, Stone briefly worked as a medical intern at a women's hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, then returned to her hometown of Jiujiang to take over the Danforth Hospital established by her sister Mary. She later founded the Bethel Mission and its encompassing hospital in 1920 along with Mary and the American missionary Jennie Hughes. She contracted tuberculosis and died in 1930.

Early life Phebe Stone was born around 1891 to the Shih family, a respected Christian household in the city of Jiujiang, China. Stone's father was a Christian preacher and one of the first converts to Christianity in central China along with his wife. He had Stone and her sisters receive a Christian education from an early age that emphasized western customs, including having unbound feet, which went against the Chinese custom at the time for women to practice foot binding. Under the American missionaries Gertrude Howe and Lucy Hoag, as part of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, Stone studied Christianity at the Rulison-Fish Memorial School in Kiukiang. After completing high school, Stone went on to Goucher College in the United States for her undergraduate degree from 1910 to 1914, where she graduated with honors. During the summers in college, she studied with her sister, Mary, at the Danforth Hospital in China, which Mary had established. This reinforced Stone's interest in the medical field and spurred her on to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she had won a prestigious fellowship. She graduated from the institution in 1918, making her the first Chinese woman to graduate from the school. Stone's sister was the founder and previous superintendent of the Methodist hospital, and Stone was chosen to replace her as the superintendent when she resigned.

In 1920, Stone left her position at Danforth to establish the Bethel Mission and Hospital with her sister. At Danforth, she and her sister grew frustrated of the pay disparity between Chinese and American nurses and hospital administrators that did not change despite their complaints with the WFMS representatives who oversaw the hospital budget. At the Bethel Mission, Stone was able to have more control of her responsibilities and finances all while continuing her medical work in the hospital and evangelism through the mission's church. She was known as one of the best doctors in the area because of her medical and surgical skill as well as her genuine and kind personality. Many patients who came to Bethel requested her personally as a physician because of her reputation.