| Doctor Mary in Arabia: Memoirs |  | Author: Mary Bruins, M.d. Allison
Creator: Sandra Shaw
Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr
Category: Book
Buy Used: $50.30
Used (3) from $50.30
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 3232459
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 329
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 0292704542
Dewey Decimal Number: 610.695092
EAN: 9780292704541
ASIN: 0292704542
Publication Date: May 1994
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Product Description
"Dr. Mary Allison has written a fascinating book about her nearly forty years as a medical missionary in the Arabian Gulf. . . . Dr. Mary in Arabia is a valuable addition to the writings of foreigners about the Middle East. . . . Mary Allison provides detailed information on many aspects of life in the region to readers with few contemporary native sources at their disposal. . . . The fact that she is a complicated and interesting human being adds to the pleasure of reading what she has to say about her profession and the places where she practiced it." --Middle East Journal Until fairly recently, Islamic women rarely received professional health care, since few women doctors had ever practiced in Arabia and their culture forbade them from consulting male doctors. Not surprisingly, Dr. Mary Bruins Allison faced an overwhelming demand when she arrived in Kuwait in 1934 as a medical missionary of the Reformed Church of America. Over the next forty years, "Dr. Mary" treated thousands of women and children, faithfully performing the duties that seemed required of her as a Christian--to heal the sick and seek converts. These memoirs record a fascinating life. Dr. Allison briefly describes her upbringing and her professional training at Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania. She then focuses on her experiences in Kuwait, where women of all classes, including royalty, flocked to her care. In addition to describing many of her cases, Dr. Allison paints a richly detailed picture of life in Kuwait both before and after the discovery of oil transformed the country. Her recollections include invaluable details of women's lives in the Middle East during the early and mid-twentieth century. They add a valuable chapter to the story of modern medicine, to the largely unsuccessful efforts of the Christian church to win converts in the Middle East, and to the opportunities and limitations that faced American women of the period. Dr. Allison also worked briefly in Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and India, and she includes material on each country. The introduction situates her experiences in the context of Middle Eastern and medical developments of the period.
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| Customer Reviews:
Illuminating July 23, 2004
This book tells the story of Dr. Mary Allison, medical missionary in the Arabian Gulf from 1935-1975. Dr. Allison, or Dr. Mary, as she was known in the Gulf, was the daughter of a minister and decided at an early age that she wanted to be a missionary. Since women at that time were not commonly called to the pulpit, she trained as an M.D., a general practitioner, and applied to work for a missionary society as soon as she completed her training. She was sent to Kuwait in 1934, where she served in a mission hospital until 1964, with brief sojourns away during World War when she worked in the US and India. Following her time in Kuwait, she also served in Bahrain and Oman until her retirement in 1975. This book represents her personal memoirs of her years of training and service, stretching from her early childhood through retirement. The book includes a small collection of black and white photographs documenting scenes of daily life in Kuwait and Oman, as well as the clinics where Dr. Allison worked and her patients and helpers.
Dr. Allison comes across as being very modest about her training and skills. She claimed she was of average ability, and many of the anecdotes described in the book tell of her medical failures, although some highlight her successes as well. She possessed an unwavering faith in her particular version of Christianity, heavily influenced by her Dutch heritage. She felt that even if she wasn?t the best doctor in the world, her very presence and willingness to serve gave life and hope to her patients. Given the low level of development in the Gulf at the time and the lack of access to quality medical care, she was able to save hundreds, if not thousands of lives, through her work. As for saving souls, she describes how she only knew of one or two Muslims during her entire 40 years in the Gulf who had converted to Christianity, and seemed to have trouble understanding why more were not attracted to her faith by the kinds of work the mission hospital was offering.
The documentation that Allison provides of mission life in the Gulf during the first part of the Twentieth Century is invaluable. Allison was in the middle of all the changes that came to pass as the oil money began to flow. When she first arrived, she learned to survive and work through the desert summer heat without AC. Her patients came to her with trachoma, tuberculosis, and infected feet from stepping on needles. Then oil company men came from the West, and she even ended up marrying one herself. She describes how the oil money brought AC, electric lights, cars, and schools. If she could re-visit Kuwait today, she would find very little trachoma or infected feet. Instead, there is diabetes, heart disease, and car accidents, the scourge of the Gulf which ensures that polygamy will be a common practice for all of the foreseeable future. Although she left the region before all of these changes came to pass, she could already see them coming.
Anyone who has spent time living in the Gulf will recognize that many traditions have changed very little since the time when Allison first arrived. The Arabs still drink their coffee with cardamom, and a visitor must take 3 cups, swirling the last to signal satiation. Many women are still not free to pursue health care on their own, and medical personnel will not touch a woman, even in an emergency, without a husband?s permission. Blood for transfusions is ever in great need, especially because of the innumerable car accidents, but people don?t die anymore for lack of blood donations because enough ex-pats are around to keep a steady blood supply, and even some Arabs are now willing to donate blood. There is still a dearth of nurses from the Gulf, but the shortage is no longer due to lack of proper education for girls. It turns out that Gulf Arabs just don?t like nursing as a career, so they still import the vast majority of their nurses from India and the Philippines.
Although the information in the book is fascinating in itself, the book could really have used quite a bit more editing. There are a number of places where Dr. Allison repeats the same anecdotes, and she occasionally even confuses the location where she met a particular patient, sometimes saying it was in Kuwait and later in Bahrain, for instance. All in all, though, the book is well worth reading for anyone with an interest in the Gulf, especially those considering taking a medical posting in a Gulf country.
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