Arthur Neve, MD (1859-1919) was a Christian medical missionary who felt the call to serve abroad early on in life. As a well-distinguished doctor, Neve willingly left home at a young age when he was called to Kashmir to continue the medical missions of Dr. Theodore Maxwell and Dr. William Elmsie. He moved to Asia and never looked back, soon becoming the head of the Kashmir Medical Mission where he would go on to serve the sick in Kashmir for the next thirty-four years by building the Kashmir Mission Hospital with his brother. Ernest. Influenced by his strong roots in his religion, Neve served the people of Kashmir while also spreading his Christian message to a predominantly Muslim and Brahmin area.
He also served in World War I as a Major at the military hospitals in Brighton and France. He was praised for his extraordinary work serving his home and the injured of the war.
Neve is also remembered as an avid mountaineer for his excursions in the rural outskirts of Kashmir, as traveling and geographical research became one of his favourite hobbies while living abroad. After finishing his time serving in the war, he returned to Kashmir in 1919 where he died shortly after.
It is written of an officer in the army of I King Charles I that "he served his king with difficult, dangerous, and expensive loyalty." These words aptly describe Arthur Neve of Kashmir and the service which he gave so unsparingly for thirty-eight years in Kashmir and beyond. Endowed with gifts which would have won him fame and distinction at home, he yet chose to devote his life to the service of God and humanity in one of the world's backwaters.
No attempt has been made in these pages to give a complete and detailed account of Dr. Neve's career; but it has seemed well to present in broad outline some pictures of the man at his work in order to show to the men and women of to-day the life of a medical missionary. Dr. Neve's desire was "to make it easier for those who come after." The hospital at Srinagar, where his brother still works, and the hospitals along the North-West Frontier are waiting with eager longing to welcome physicians and surgeons who will build on foundations that were well laid by the great men who have gone before.
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