Dr. Pennell spent over 16 years on the Afghan/India border as a medical missionary starting in 1892. His insights and common sense approach to men's souls for Christ is heart warming and sobering. This is NOT a hagiography, but rather a real life story about real men affected for Christ. The Afghan culture demanded death for Christian converts, yet Jesus through Dr. Pennell drew hungry hearts to a new life. Dr. Pennell died at the age of 44. This is his story, written by him.

Larry G.

This book is a valuable record of sixteen years' good work by an officer a medical missionary in charge of a medical mission station at Bannu, on the North-West Frontier of India.

Although many accounts have been written descriptive of the wild tribes on this border, there was still plenty of room for Dr. Pennells modestly-related narrative. Previous writers e.g., Paget and Mason, Holdich, Oliver, Warburton, Elsmie, and many others have dealt with the expeditions that have taken place from time to time against the turbulent occupants of the trans-Indus mountains, and with the military problems and possibilities of the difficult regions which they inhabit. But Dr. Pennelfs story is not concerned with the clash of arms. His mission has been to preach, to heal, and to save ; and in his long and intimate intercourse with the tribesmen, as recounted in these pages, he throws many new and interesting sidelights on the domestic and social, as well as on the moral and religious, aspects of their lives and characters.

During a long career in India I myself have seen and heard a good deal about these medical missions, and I can testify to their doing excellent and useful work, and that they are valuable and humanizing factors and moral aids well worthy of all encouragement and support.

No one can read Dr. Pennell's experiences without feeling that the man who is a physician and able to heal the body, in addition to being a preacher who can " minister to a mind diseased " as well as to spiritual needs, wields an influence which is not possessed by him who is a missionary only.

As the author himself writes : " The doctor finds his sphere everywhere, and his hands are full of work as soon as he arrives (at his station). He is able to overcome suspicion and prejudice, and his kindly aid and sympathetic treatment disarm opposition, while his life is a better setting forth of Christianity than his words. There is a door everywhere which can be opened by love and sympathy and practical service, and no one is more in a position to have a key for every door than a doctor."

These few words fairly sum up the situation, and I fully agree with the view they express.

On such a wild frontier as that on the North-West Border of India the life of a doctor-missionary is beset with many perils. A perusal of Dr. Pennell's most interesting story shows that he has had his share of them, and that in the earnest and zealous discharge of his duties he has faced them bravely and cheerfully. I cordially recommend his book to all readers, and my earnest hope is that medical missions will continue to flourish.

ROBERTS, P.M.

About the Author:

Theodore Leighton Pennell (1867-1912), was a Christian missionary and doctor who lived among the tribes of Afghanistan. He founded a missionary hospital in Bannu in the North-West Frontier of British India, now Pakistan. For his work he received the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal for Public Service in India.

Pennell, the ' Sahib Doctor' of the Afghan frontier, possessed that rare combination of qualities which marked him for distinction and wide influence at home as well as for a great work on the field. He stood six feet two, had a powerful physique, knew no fear, was of prepossessing manners, keen intelligence and great originality ; he was fond of sport, and he spent his missionary years among turbulent tribes where his life was in almost constant danger. It is an extraordinarily interesting story which his wife has given us in this volume.

Theodore Pennell’s father, an English physician, died when the boy was nine years old, so that the bringing up was mainly the work of the mother, a woman of somewhat stern unyielding ways, but of remarkable character. She it was who turned his thought toward India when he had finished his medical course. He went out to India under the Church Missionary Society in 1892, with a long string of initials after his name and enough gold medals in his pocket to indicate what his success might have been had he stayed at home. He was assigned to Bannu on the Afghan frontier. It was a rough pioneer work and well suited to Pennell's character and tastes.

He established a hospital, he built a boys' school, and at one time ran a mission press. In the midst of all these activities he found time for much language study and for frequent preaching in the bazaars. He learned thoroughly Urdu and Pushtu, and acquired a working knowledge of Persian, Arabic and Panjabi. His method was to build up his medical practice and school work by frequent tours along the frontier. Each tour was an adventure from beginning to end—all kinds of dangers from desert sands, swollen rivers, mountain trails, warlike chiefs, fanatical mullahs and lurking disease.

Dr. Pennell's medical activity in the border villages was astonishing in amount. His specialty was cataract, and he thought nothing of performing a dozen operations of this kind per day while on the road. His custom was to leave behind in each village a native assistant who would attend to the patients while he pressed on. Each night was spent in the bazaars preaching and using the magic lantern, while stones and clods were flying. It was a tribute to his hold on the people that his life was never attempted. The Government recognized him as one of the greatest factors for peace and order on the frontier.

Dr. Pennell had decided theories as to missionary work. He wore the native dress of the tribe he was visiting, holding that this was essential to his getting close to the people. His disguise was so complete and his use of the vernacular so perfect that he almost uniformly passed for a Pathan among both officials and natives. Acting upon the theory that the great secret of missionary work is knowing the people sympathetically and living among them, he undertook a long journey through North India as a Christian sadhu. He started out on a bicycle, with a native companion, without script or purse, determined to beg his way and put to the test the possibility of this method of disseminating the Gospel.

He visited many other missions on this trip and made shrewd observations upon their theories and work. He liked the custom of the missions which encouraged the native Christians to sit on mats in the churches according to their ancestral custom, rather than using English pews. He commended the missionaries who lived in the midst of the people as over against the ' splendid isolation of a distant bungalow.' Dr. Pennell made large use of athletics in his school work. He found time to coach his various teams and even accompanied his football team of sturdy Pathans on a tour of Northern and Western India, during which they won most of the matches. Athletic sports he found to be the best sort of discipline in obedience and self-control for his Afghan boys.

Those who met Dr. Pennell at the Lucknow Conference in 1911 will recall that characteristic speech of his in which, after hearing of the Mohammedan advance in Africa, he advocated sending Indian converts from Islam into Africa as missionaries. It is interesting to find in his biography the statement that immediately upon his return to Bannu he laid the matter before his Christians and persuaded one of them to start for Mombasa. This act may prove to be the most significant in his life. It certainly was characteristic of his straightforward, practical nature.

Dr. Pennell’s death from septicaemia on March 23, 1912 aged forty-five, was a great set-back to the medical work. Sadly a short life lived, but one of glorious achievement in character and work. That he made one hundred converts from among the fanatical Afghans is much, to those who know what Mohammedan work on the border involves, but it is far more that he opened wide the way for the others who will follow. There can be no finer tribute than that of the man who, after the doctor's death, came across the border and asked to see his ' Padre Sahib.' The Pathan assistant pointed to the English doctor present as the person who would help him. ' No,' said the man, ' I want Pennell Sahib.' When he was told what had happened, he refused all treatment, and overcome, he hastened out of the room, saying at the door in his guttural Pushtu, ' All the mothers in London will never produce such a son.'

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