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Dr. CANTLIE.-Then there are three classes of cases? Those who come to die, the convalescents or chronic invalids, and the ordinary hospital patients?
Dr. AYRES.-I would recommend that these chronic cases should be got out by degrees and sent away to their native villages. Most of these people come from outside the Colony. Some say they come from the islands in the neighbourhood, some say from Singapore. There is not one in five who actually belongs to the Colony.
Mr. MCCONACHIE.-Do you pay more than one visit a day?
Dr. AYRES.-No. I do not think more frequent visits would serve any good purpose. It would only harass them. I see every patient admitted. I see all the dead bodies before they are taken away. The ordinary Hospital patients are smallest in number. They have a great many cases of remittent and intermittent fever. I watch these cases until their temperature is down to normal. The daily number of admissions since I took to visiting the Hospital is about six; sometimes thirteen or fourteen and sometimes only three or four. There are six or seven corpses a day. I see all the admissions-those brought in to die also.
THE PRESIDENT.-Do you think any scheme for the establishment of dispensaries for the sale of European drugs, at nominal prices, to Chinese, with a view of popularising Western medicines, is practicable or desirable ?
Dr. AYRES.--In the light of experience I do not think it is desirable. I had charge of four of these outside dispensaries in India, and we were supposed to charge all that could be charged and we had very little money out of them. What we got would not have paid two days' working expenses a month. The natives came for quinine, cod liver oil and bark, drugs which they were accustomed to use themselves but which we had done up in better form, but nothing else.
Mr. THURBURN.—The object why this question is asked is because the Government have an idea of spreading a knowledge of foreign drugs amongst the Chinese.
Dr. AYRES.-There was a dispensary of this sort in Queen's Road; it worked there for a long time, but it seems to have disappeared lately.
Mr. MCCONACHIE.-Was there not one in Wanchai?
Dr. CANTLIE.-It was the Nethersole Dispensary; it has been made into the Nethersole Hospital.
THE PRESIDENT.-Do you think if these dispensaries were established they would be self-supporting?
Dr. AYRES.-Certainly not.
THE PRESIDENT.-What extra cost would be involved?
Dr. AYRES.-Mr. CROW, the Government Analyst, sent in a long report on that subject. (At this point Dr, AYRES entered into a statement about the inability of Mr. Ü-I-KAI to diagnose cases shown to him in the Tung Wah Hospital. He stated Mr. Ü-I-KAI was a very smart boy, but he could not diagnose these cases.)
Mr. THURBURN.-The Government had an idea of setting up these dispensaries to encourage these students of the College of Medicine to set up in practice as doctors among the Chinese in the Colony.
Dr. AYRES. They have not been able to get a practice so far as I can see. One is in Borneo and another is in Honolulu.