Golding Bird - Christian Works

Christian Works

Bird was a committed Christian throughout his life. Despite his extremely busy professional life, he meticulously observed the Sabbath and saw to the Christian education of his children. He showed generosity to the poor, offering them treatment at his house every morning before going about his professional schedule. After it became clear that the remainder of his life was going to be very limited, he devoted all his time to his religion. He had a great ambition to promote Christian teachings and Bible reading among medical students. From 1853 Bird organised a series of religious meetings of medical professionals in London, aiming to encourage physicians and surgeons to exert a religious influence over their students.

For several years prior to 1853, student prayer meetings had been held in some of the London hospitals, particularly St Thomas'. Bird aimed to mould this movement into a formal association, an ambition which was to crystallise as the Christian Medical Association. He was heavily influenced in this by the Medical Missionary Society of John Hutton Balfour at Edinburgh University. Bird aimed to form a national body with a chapter in each teaching hospital; a prototype student group was already in existence at Guy's. He was strongly opposed by some sections of the medical profession, who felt that students should concentrate on their studies. Among the insults levelled at Bird were "saponaceous piety" and being a Mawworm. This opposition continued after the formation of the Association. The constitution of the new Christian Medical Association was agreed at Bird's home on 17 December 1853 in a meeting of medical and surgical teachers and others. It was based on a draft prepared by the Guy's student group. Bird died before the inaugural public meeting of the Association in November 1854 at Exeter Hall.

Bird was quick to defend the virtuousness of students. In November 1853, in a reply to a letter from a student in the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal complaining of a lack of moral care from his superiors, Bird attacked the prevalent public view that students were "guilty of every kind of open vice and moral depravity". Bird laid much of the blame for this public opinion on the caricatures of students in the writings of Charles Dickens. He went on to say that the behaviour and character of students had greatly improved over the preceding ten years. He attributed this improvement in part to the greatly increased study requirements imposed on students, but also in part to Christian influences acting on them. He also commented that pious students had once been ridiculed, but were now respected.