Jean Dow  Dr. Jean Isabelle Dow (25 June 1870 –16 January 1927) was a Canadian medical missionary, who was regarded as a pioneer in women's health care for her work as a member of, and one of the only women in, the Canadian Presbyterian Church Mission in the Honan (currently referred to as Henan) province of China. She played an important role in treating visceral leishmaniasis (kala azar) disease and in creating female specific hospitals where women could be treated as first-class citizens. Dow was born in the town of Fergus in Ontario, Canada. She was the fifth of eight children. Her father, Peter Dow (married to Agnes Wilson), was the superintendent of his own school, named the Dow’s School. The family was progressive and valued education. They were members of the Melville Presbyterian Church in Fergus. Dow graduated from high school at the age of thirteen and went on to study at the Model School in Mount Forest to become a teacher. From 1885 to 1891, Dow taught at her father's school in Fergus. In 1891, no longer wanting to be a teacher, Dow enrolled in the University of Toronto’s Trinity College where she studied medicine. In 1895, she graduated from college as a licensed physician. Not wanting to practice medicine in Canada, Dow chose to take her medical skills to the Canadian Presbyterian Church Mission in the Honan province of China, otherwise referred to as the North Honan Mission. Growing up, Dow and her family were members of the Melville Presbyterian Church in Fergus. Melville Presbyterian Church was a mission-oriented institution. It was there that Dow was first exposed to missionaries and realized a potential interest in pursuing foreign mission work. In 1891, Dow joined the Presbyterian Women's Foreign Missionary Society which recruited women to engage in missionary service abroad. Notably, Dow critically thought about the impact of her missionary work. In a 1903 letter to her co-worker Margaret Griffith, who worked along side her in the North Honan Mission, Dow reflected on the motivations of medical missionaries working abroad, observing that some of their work was motivated by the “most subtle of all kinds of selfishness – religious selfishness – which seeks happiness, not helpfulness, as the goal." For thirty years, from 1895 to her death in 1927, Dow served as a surgeon and as a member of the North Honan Mission. The North Honan Mission was a Presbyterian mission founded by Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth in 1888.