396
was one of the most intelligent, trustworthy and active men we have had in my Department and I very much regretted his loss when old age compelled him to resign after 30 years' service. No European was a better dresser or better post mortem assistant and many of the trained Europeans we have had were not his equal; for a man of his age he is in good health now, possesses all his faculties and his intelligence, but is as inveterate a smoker as ever. I am in no way in favour of opium smoking, to me it is a ridiculous, lazy habit. To smoke opium you must devote your entire attention to it and to it only and I can't find any pleasure in it or the reason for its fascination ainongst the Chinese. In all the description of opium dens in European countries alcoholic drinks come in as well. But amongst the Chinese no liquor is taken at or about the time of smoking. The dens in European countries or colonies devoted to opium are mostly devoted to general debauchery as well. In China the houses where opium is smoked are devoted to that alone, and no such scenes as are described in European dens are to be found among them; for I have visited them in different parts of China as well as in this Colony. Opium smoking is also indulged in in Chinese brothels, but even in them such rowdy scenes never take place as in the similar places where Europeans congregate. General debility accounted for all the 5 cases admitted from the 82 opium smokers in the Gaol to Hospital in 1890, but as three of them were 58 years of age had they not been opium smokers they would probably have been put on the sick list as suffering from age. Then as many of the opium smokers in Gaol are of the lowest class of Chinese and pinch their bellies for the luxury. They are probably on a par with habitual drunkards at home, who earn this character for 6 pennyworth of gin or less a day on an empty stomach, when the same amount of alcohol has no effect on the well-fed consumer. There is one more test which I hope the Government Analyst will be able to make this year with the convenience of the new laboratory, and that is how much morphia enters the mouth and lungs of the opium smoker with the smoke or the other less pernicious constituents of opium. The introduction of alcoholic drinks by Europeans to otherwise temperate nations has done more harm a thousand fold than ever opium has done among the Chinese, but then that would affect the people at home, but there is only one India to be abused and no European nationality is affected. The palaver about opium eating in India has only been taken up because of opium being introduced into China. What Society has thought it worth its while to take up the questions of Indian hemp smoking and eating in India a very much more deleterious habit both to mind and body? Better men than myself have taken up the gauntlet for the opium eater; but my five years' service in Assam and Bengal gave me considerable experience of that and I have had personal experience as well having eaten over an ounce of opium a day for months that I can understand the fascination for and the pleasure in it, but I found no difficulty in leaving it off, beyond a few sleepless nights and a considerable amount of irritability caused by its cessation. Khalassees, or Indian seamen, largely employed in all the Indian trade are to be seen in every seaport in Europe, and yet I am considerably under the mark in saying at least 15 per cent. of these men are opium eaters, and I have done many long voyages with them; better seamen with finer physique for their size cannot be found. You will never see a vessel put to sea with a third of them incapable of doing duty for days from the effect of this habit, but you can any time see a vessel set sail from an English crew more than a third incapable from drink when going down the stormy English Channel. To abolish the opium trade in India will do a good thing for China. India and Ceylon are running her hard in the tea trade competition, but do away with the Indian opium trade and she will grow opium for all the world. Every Consular Report shows the rapid and extensive increase of the growth of opium in China, and if it is made worth his while John Chinaman will soon improve his manufacture of the drug, and it will be smuggled into India wholesale.
LUNATIC ASYLUMS.
In November this year the Chinese Lunatic Asylum was first opened. There were already two Chinese, one male and one female, in the European Asylum, as there was nowhere else to put them.
On the 1st of January there were three European lunatics, one Coloured lunatic, and one Chinese in the European Asylum. There were five European lunatics, one Coloured, and one Chinese admitted during the year. Most of these have been sent to their own countries.
The two Chinese were transferred from the European Lunatic Asylum to the Chinese Asylum, when it was opened in November.
Five cases were transferred from the Tung Wa Hospital at the same time to the Asylum. One fresh case was admitted during the ensuing two months.
TUNG WA HOSPITAL.
The number of admissions to this Hospital during 1891 was 2,514, of these 1,159 died in the Hospital, 331 were moribund when admitted. As I have often stated the majority of the cases admitted into this Hospital are in a hopeless condition on admission, this is patent to any one walking round the wards without any medical education.
Of out-patients there were 99,446 who attended the Hospital during this year. At the end of the year there were 112 still in the Hospital.