William Hamilton Jeffreys (1872-1945) was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and came to China in 1901 as a medical missionary. In 1905 he became professor of surgery at St. John’s University 聖約翰大學, a Christian university in Shanghai. Today the tradition from St. John’s is continued by the School of Medicine at Shanghai Jiaotong University 上海交通大学, while the former St. John’s campus is now the campus of East China University of Political Science and Law 华东政法大学. Jeffreys in his work saw the need for a handy medical phrase book, and first compiled one in Shanghai Thoo-bak 土白, meaning ”dialect” or ”colloquial”, literally ”earthy colloquial”. In 1909 he first published a Mandarin version (see review from 1909 here), and we have the second edition from 1916.
The list of colloquial expressions is quite interesting, and it is a mix of all kinds of phrases that a doctor might come across. Mostly disease related sayings, but also a phrase like 不要豁喇豁喇的吵 ”Stop all that pow-wow”. 豁喇 huola is an onomatepoeic word meaning a quite loud rumbling or howling noise, and with 吵 chao, ”make noise” or ”quarrel”, it is obvious that it means a noisy and quarrelling patient. The use of ”pow-wow” made me a little confused, but it was probably rather common in American usage at the time for ”conferencing” or ”talking”, Jeffreys likely using it to underline the colloquial tone.
The book ends with a section of ”Prayers for Use in Hospitals”, in Chinese with short English references for what purpose each prayer has.