[xxi ]
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Question 1.—Whether the Hospital is fulfilling the object of its Incorporation.
14. During the twenty-four years it has been in existence the Tung Wa Hospital has rendered very excellent service as a Poor House and Refuge for sick and destitute Chinese, and it has completely superseded the old "I-Ts'z." It has given the sick a better chance of recovery than they could have had in their own houses. It has enabled thousands to die in comparative case and comfort. It has contributed to the general health of the Colony by withdrawing Chinese affected by contagious or infectious diseases from their own houses in crowded tenements in narrow streets. It has promoted vaccination. The Tung Wa Hospital has done all this, and it has in addition performed a considerable amount of charitable, benevolent and other meritorious work without expense to the Government of the Colony; but it has not been "the really good, well
conducted Hospital to be used for the relief and the cure of sick and destitute Chinese" Appendix that Sir RICHARD MACDONNELL desired and meant to establish and that the then Secretary of State, Lord GRANVILLE, approved of and sanctioned. As the Colonial Surgeon points out-"The Tung Wa Hospital is not, in any proper sense according to Evidence
European ideas, a Hospital," that is, a place for the medical treatment of the sick with a view to their recovery and cure as the result of that treatment.
*
15 and 22.
P. CL
P. 12.
1 in
15. It has, in my opinion, failed to become what Sir RICHARD MACDONNELL intended it to be, and what the British Government supposed it would become, not because of any mismanagement by the Chinese Directors, or of any failure on their part to carry out the provisions of the Ordinance incorporating it--the Chinese have according to their lights managed the institution as a Poor House, Refuge and Dying House with all reasonable diligence, zeal, and care-but because of the failure of successive Re- gistrars General and Colonial Surgeons to exercise that "continuous inspection, Amendix
frequent supervision, and that regular and systematic control" over the management of the Hospital that Sir RICHARD MACDONNELL contemplated, and the Secretary of State Appendix required as the condition on which his sanction to and approval of the incorporation of the Tung Wa were given. The official documents and the evidence indicate that, from a very early period, that control and that supervision ceased to be exercised effectively; that the Chinese have been left to their own devices ;--that the visits of the Colonial Surgeon, made as a rule once a month only instead of daily, became as early as in 1873 merely formal and perfunctory; and that from shortly after its foundation in 1872 the state of the Hospital could not be considered satisfactory. In 1894 public attention was forcibly directed to its condition, and the reports and evidence leave no doubt that Evidence it had then become overcrowded, filthy, insanitary, and dangerous not only to the *. health of the inmates but to the public of Hongkong.
16. Dr. AYRES, the Colonial Surgeon, in his evidence on 18th June, 1896, states :—
44
p. 40 to 43,
D. 60-65.
......There is no surgical treatment of any kind in the Tung Evidence "Wa as recognised by European methods.................................... There are no "qualifications recognised in China to practise medicine, and these so- "called 'Doctors' have none according to our European ideas...
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"The treatment by the so-called 'Doctors' practising at the Tung Wa is tantamount to no treatment at all in the majority of cases. My memory "of it (the surgical ward) is, that it was the worst ward in the whole. "hospital, unless it has been very much improved since I left in 1894. "We always considered it 'a chamber of horrors.' That is in regard to "the treatment of disease..... ......You can see in the Macao Hos- "pital that they are much better off there than we are here in the Tung
Wa, and they are much more careful of the clothing, &c.......
"
"It would be a very good thing to have a Chinese adequately trained in "Western medical science in the Tung Wa, but he cannot be trusted "without a European Surgeon to verify the cases afterwards......................... "He would certainly require constant supervision on the part of the