Under a Spreading Banyan Tree: Chiang Mai's McKean Institute

Part of Ancient Chiang Mai

The season was advancing. The further we went, the shallower grew the stream. Long before we reached Chiengmai, we had to use canoes to lighten our boats; but presently a seasonable rise in the river came to our aid. On Saturday evening, April 1st, 1867, we moored our boats beside a mighty banyan tree, whose spreading arms shaded a space more than a hundred feet wide.

Daniel McGilvary, A Half Century Among the Siamese and the Lao

Just four kilometres south of Chiang Mai, in a narrow reach of the River Ping, lies the sleepy island of Koh Klang. Lozenge-shaped and just under 65 hectares in area, the island is connected to the east bank of the Ping by a low, cream-coloured brick and stucco bridge. This is the entrance to Chiang Mai's McKean Institute, once a hospital and colony for leprosy patients, today the site of a modern rehabilitation centre set amidst extensive lawns and shaded by mighty rain trees.

When the boat carrying Presbyterian missionary Daniel McGilvary first drew up beneath the spreading banyan tree on Koh Klang's western shore, the island was all but uninhabited. According to local folk history, at about this time Koh Klang was the private domain of a ‘good luck’ elephant given by the ruler of Chiang Mai to his son on the latter's coming of age. Unfortunately 'this creature, although a pet, was wilful and vicious. If hungry for rice, he would tear down a granary and help himself to it. He even demolished native houses to get baskets of rice he knew were there'. Eventually the elephant was banished to Koh Klang - then unconnected to the mainland by a bridge - where it lived in isolation, 'destroying the fields and gardens and driving away the people' for more than thirty years.

During this period the pioneering Daniel McGilvary was joined at the American Presbyterian Mission in Chiang Mai by other missionaries. One such was James W. McKean, a doctor from Scotch Grove, Iowa, who arrived at the northern capital in 1889 and began caring for the sick. He was particularly concerned with the then incurable disease of leprosy, and from about 1897 started appealing to the Thai authorities in Bangkok for permission to found a leprosarium at some isolated spot outside the city. Now freed from the ravages of the rogue elephant, Koh Klang seemed to offer a perfect spot. The beast's owner - who by now had succeeded his father as Prince of Chiang Mai - therefore offered the island to Dr McKean, who was pleased to accept. In 1908, with limited funds in hand but an initial contingent of nine leprosy sufferers waiting to move in, the work of clearing the island was begun, and the McKean Institute founded.

The beginnings may have been modest, but before long both patients and funds began to flow in. McKean provided hope, sympathy and understanding for sufferers from leprosy all over north Thailand and beyond. As word of the new institute spread, patients travelled to Koh Klang from as far afield as Laos and Yunnan in southern China. At the same time news of the great work also spread upwards, to those in a position to offer financial assistance. This derived from local Chiang Mai benefactors, from Siamese royalty and nobility, national and local government and, of course, from international leprosy missions, chiefly British and American. As a consequence, hospital wards, clinics, residential cottages, administrative buildings and a church all appeared on the formerly uninhabited island.

Following the visit of King Prajadhipok (Rama VII) to Chiang Mai in 1927, the road from Koh Klang to Chiang Mai was surfaced, making communications with the rest of Thailand much easier. Meanwhile great advances were being made in the treatment of leprosy, a process to which McKean made a considerable contribution. By 1930 the institute had acquired a world-wide reputation, and was rewarded by a citation from the Far Eastern Society for Tropical Medicine as a model institution.

As McKean's struggle against leprosy progressed, so the face of the island changed. The ancient banyan tree still flourished, but now it was joined by great rain trees whose spreading branches threw a leafy shade over the carefully nurtured lawns and gardens. Elsewhere extensive kitchen gardens were planted, providing the institute with its own vegetables, herbs and spices. The main administration building, hospital wards, recreation hall and clinic were established on the southern part of the island. Further to the north, beyond a small village for the handicapped, the institute planted large mango, lamyai and lychee orchards. As the leprosarium grew in size and importance, it expanded over the bridge to the east bank of the Ping River, where a village school was established for local people including the children of leprosy patients.

In 1931 Dr James McKean, who had been awarded the Order of the White Elephant, Siam's highest honour, retired. He was replaced as head of the institute by his son, Hugh McKean, who had been born at Chiang Mai in 1893. Hugh remained in charge of the rehabilitation and research work at Koh Klang until the Second World War, when the Japanese invasion obliged him to leave Thailand for India. He died in 1942 at Miraj Hospital; a memorial chapel was subsequently erected in his memory in the women's village on Koh Klang.

In 1949 James McKean, by now a venerable 89 years old, died in retirement in his native United States. With his passing the close McKean family association with the institute ended, but the name and the good work lived on. Over the past forty years scientific advances in the struggle against leprosy have all but eliminated the once incurable disease within Thailand, though the institute still provides treatment for patients needing therapy and a home for aged or disabled patients, as well as assisting in the fight against Leprosy in neighbouring Laos and Burma. In recent decades the efforts of the institute have increasingly been directed towards physiotherapy and rehabilitation for the disabled.

Changed though the priorities and goals of the McKean Institute may be, the spirit of the old hospital is still very much alive in the elegant buildings and carefully-tended grounds. The visitor to Koh Klang is immediately struck by the architecture of the place. Everywhere are white and cream stucco buildings, ornamented with turn-of-the-century devices, but in the style of the Straits Settlements rather than that of northern Thailand. The atmosphere is more that of Penang, Melaka or Singapore than Chiang Mai, and it is pleasing and fascinating to stroll from building to building past lotus-filled ponds, generally protected by a canopy of great shade-giving trees.

The first taste of Malaysia in Chiang Mai comes with the crossing of the low, yellow-painted bridge to the island. A bust of James McKean stands amidst carefully-tended gardens in front of the main administration building, whence a narrow tarmac road winds away south on a circular tour of the island. The most historic buildings stand near the southern tip of Koh Klang. Here is the remarkable McClanahan Memorial Hall, distinguished by corner-pieces of trumpeting elephants. A little further on stands the McKean Hospital Church, complete with stucco-and-brick flying buttresses - a unique sight in northern Thailand. Looking north, towards the modern hospital, a water-tower like the keep of a castle, or some 19th century Cameron Highlands folly, stands out against the surrounding trees.Visitors may stroll along the west bank of the island, past the old "druggist" dispensary to the banyan tree where Daniel McGilvary disembarked almost 118 years ago. An engraved stone, set amidst lush ferns, marks the spot.

Text by Andrew Forbes, images by David Henley. © CPA Media, 2007