The first and oldest congregational hospital Davao is today’s Brokenshire Memorial Hospital, named after American missionary Dr. Herbert Cecil Brokenshire, a graduate of Cornell University Medical College, New York, who was later appointed as its hospital director.
It was on August 4, 1902, when Rev. Robert Franklin Black set foot in Davao, becoming the first American Protestant missionary to serve the area. His wife, Anna Gertrude Granger, whom he married that same year on board the ship Siberias, arrived in Davao on Dec. 19, 1903, to accept the job of the Boston-based American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
Rev. Black’s first year in Davao was lackluster. Enduring the challenge of curing malaria and cholera affecting local residents, he wrote the Board to send a medical missionary to address the illnesses. While awaiting answer from the U.S., Mary Matthewson (later Mrs. William Gohn), a young American nurse with the group of early American settlers who came to Davao, volunteered to open medical outreach clinic by the riverbank of Davao at Bankerohan in 1906.
Two years later, in response to Rev. Black’s call, Dr. Charles Thomas Sibley and wife, Annie Short, arrived in Davao on Feb. 24, 1908, and established a bamboo-and-nipa clinic along Magallanes Street (now Antonio Pichon Sr.) by the bank of Davao River. Known as the Davao Mission Hospital, it was realized through the auspices of the Congregational Church of the U.S., but the construction of its first 36-bed building did not start until September 1910.
Dr. Sibley, the hospital’s first director who held the post until April 1916, described the medical institution in his book Our Chance in the Philippines (1914):
“The hospital building is small; its structure is crude; it was quickly built of unseasoned wood and is fit only for temporary use; a fine modern building is already planned in its place. But in this small building what miracles of healing have been wrought; what relief and comfort and new hope have been dispensed! And here the word of the gospel has been distributed in English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Visayan, and Tagalog, to patients of all these nationalities, besides great number of the semi-savage and really wild tribes.”
Although the primary mission of the Protestant Church of America in coming to the country was for the “Civilized Filipinos” who were “tired of the shams and forms of Romanism (Catholicism)” to learn from the pastors and mentors of the Congregational Church of America, they also saw the need to extend medical and educational assistance to the locals.
By Dr. Sibley’s account, in 1913 the Davao Mission Hospital cared for some 700 in-patients and its five dispensaries treated around 13,000 cases. Among the patients attended to were 60 leper suspects, who found to be suffering from malignant tropical ulcers. Six of the cases “were in so frightful condition as to be beyond help” and were taken cared for in a separate location.
With only 104 congregational members assisting, the hospital served mainly the Catholic population of the district during its early years. To reach the remote regions, the personnel had to use water transport in making the hospital services “available to a very extensive territory comprehending practically the entire gulf region of the province of Davao and extending well up the Pacific coast.” Because the government did not have a formal sickbay to attend to public healthy requirements, the mission hospital also became a chief partner in the “care and treatment of a very large number of persons suffering from more or less repulsive diseases.”
In 1916, the hospital treated 462 patients and provided medical advice to 13,241 in its dispensary. During this time there was still no government medical institution that was serving the public. There was, of course, a provincial health officer who took care of the sanitary district of Baganga and the adjacent townships along the coastal towns of Davao Oriental, and, from time to time upon arrangement, the constabulary medical officer of Mati who was supervising dispensaries and was acting as public office in charge of the town and its nearby territory.
All in all, there were thirteen clinics maintained by the government. These were located at Holy Cross, La Union, Baganga, Caraga, Cateel, Madaum, Bunawan, Monkayo, Santa Cruz, Malita, Davao, and Mati. For that year alone, 5,983 individuals applied for medical and surgical relief and received a total of 19,965 treatments.
Others who served the hospital after Dr. Sibley’s tour of duty were Dr. Lucius Case (1916-1920) and Dr. Roy St. Clair (1920-1924). Dr. Floyd L. Smith and wife Bessie H. Smith, Rev. Julius (1916-1928) and Mrs. Gertrude Elmer Augur, who organized and led the first Girl Scout troop in the Philippines, also dedicated their lives to the hospital; they were all American missionaries. In 1924, in an interim capacity, Dr. Pedro Santos was appointed as the hospital’s first Filipino medical director in acting capacity.
Two years later, Dr. Brokenshire took over as new director. Prior to his arrival, he was a surgeon at the Methodist Episcopal Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. It was under his 14-year supervision that the hospital acquired many of its facilities.
When war broke out, he was called to active duty in the U.S. Navy, serving the military from August 1941 to Jan. 1, 1942. He was taken prisoner of war but still served heroically as a member of the Staff of the U.S. Naval Hospital Unit while being interned at the Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa for two years (1942-44) “with orders from the Japanese to establish a hospital for the treatment of the Filipino and American prisoners-of-war.”
He died at sea on Oct. 24, 1944 on board the Japanese ship bound for Japan, which was torpedoed by Allied Forces. Three years later, on Oct. 30, 1947, the Prudential Committee voted to name the rebuilt Davao Mission Hospital to Brokenshire Memorial Hospital.
