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any post mortems that have to be done; reports and notes on cases we have to make as we can find time. As a rule it takes two men from nine to one o'clock every day to get through the routine work of the Hospital, and generally from an hour to two hours in the afternoon. There are always so many acute cases that it is absolutely necessary to go round the Hospital during the evening. The acute cases are scattered about the place, as we have got to keep the nationalities separate. Going the rounds in the evening takes from an hour to an hour and a half. The night work is sometimes very heavy, but some times there is very little to do. In the summer time it is heavy, as acute fever cases then take up two or three hours every night.
THE PRESIDENT.-Do you have many judicial cases ?
Dr. Lowson. A good number, but these have been diminished lately, because the Police Magistrates have got more into the way of taking our certificates without calling us to give evidence. They decide many cases on our certificate stating that a man is suffering from a severe scalp wound or a fracture of the leg, In big criminal cases we have got to go to the Police Court and then to the Supreme Court, and that takes up much time. Then besides all I have mentioned there is the infectious diseases work. This year, fortunately, we have had only one case of small-pox, but in the last report I wrote about the previous winter I stated that we had had fifty-six cases on board the Hygeia, mostly serious cases, requiring a medical man to stay there all night. The Hygeia was then behind Stonecutter's Island. Sometimes we had twenty or thirty acute cases. We have no thoroughly trained wardmaster for this work, and if we were to send our European nurses there it would put us at a great disadvantage in the Civil Hospital and we could not work the Civil Hospital. When we have cases on the Hygeia, it means that the medical man has to do a good deal of the nursing, and do a general watch. Many a time I have had to nurse a patient, and then to put him in his coffin and take him out to sea.
THE PRESIDENT.-Are there any new instructions saying that there must always be a medical man present in the Hospital?
Dr. Lowson. There are no written instructions for the Assistant Superintendent.
THE PRESIDENT.-When both of you are in the Colony, must not one of you be at the Hospital?
Dr. Lowson. When we are away from the Hospital we always arrange to be within hail. If one is away the other must not be much further away than the Club. Of course, just now there is even a limit to that.
THE PRESIDENT.-You have no outside visiting?
Dr. Lowson. Not unless Dr. AYRES is very busy. At ordinary times, yes; when Dr. ATKINSON is here I had often to go to Kowloon to see patients there. There are the Observatory patients and the Police at Tsimshatsui and Yaumati. Sometimes these patients cannot be moved across and Dr. AYRES has generally plenty of work on this side, and in the afternoons, when we are generally slacker at the Hospital, I go over to Kowloon. I sometimes do the cases west of the Civil Hospital, if there is a rush.
Mr. THURBURN.-When there is all this work which takes up the time of two men ordinarily, how do you manage to do it all when you are alone?
Dr. Lowson. Well, instead of the ordinary eight or nine hours a day-I took a note of
my hours since I heard about this Commission-when not particularly busy, my work averages from twelve to fifteen hours a day, and even then I never took up an ophthalmoscope to look at a case of eye disease and often I have had to send away out- patients; I asked them to come back the next day and when they came back had to tell them the same again-when I found myself in the same position and the result was that they did not come back. There is a limit to human endurance, and I must admit that I have had to send patients away.
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