Nine Years in Nipon

Doctor, missionary, and scientist Henry Faulds was born on June 1, 1843, and died on March 24, 1930. He is famous for creating fingerprinting. The family that Faulds was born into was not very wealthy. He was born in Beith, North Ayrshire. He had to quit school when he was 13 and go work as a clerk in Glasgow to help support his family. When he was 21, he chose to go to Glasgow University and study math, logic, and the classics at the Faculty of Arts. He later went to Anderson's College to study medicine and finished with a license to practice as a doctor. When Faulds graduated, he went to work for the Church of Scotland as a medical missionary. He was sent to British India in 1871 and worked at a hospital for the poor in Darjeeling for two years. The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland sent him a letter of appointment on July 23, 1873, telling him to start a medical mission in Japan. In September of that year, he married Isabella Wilson, and in December, the couple left for Japan. In 1874, Faulds opened the first mission in Japan that spoke English. It had a hospital and a place for Japanese medical students to learn. He helped Japanese doctors learn about Joseph Lister's ways of keeping wounds clean.