( 43 ).
side the city and under proper European supervision; where Chinese medicine might be allowed a considerable amount of latitude, but where glaring medical and surgical atrocities would not be allowed.
THE PRESIDENT—Are you aware that a surprise visit was paid to the Hospital by the Secretary to the Sanitary Board shortly after the receipt of your report which is dated 1st March, 1895, and which was received by the Government on the 25th March, 1895 ?--No.
Would you be surprised to hear that a visit was paid by the Secretary to the Sani- tary Board and that he reported the Hospital to be in a fairly clean condition ?--Yes; but possibly by the time he visited it it was getting a bit better, but I do not think the Secretary to the Sanitary Board is a competent person to express an opinion on the Tung Wa Hospital and its sanitary conditions seeing that the sanitary condition was being improved. That is only one point in my report.
You call it a perfect abomination of filth, and state that steps are taken by the Tung Wa Committee to have it rendered passable when they are apprised of intended visits. Are you aware that no notice was given on the occasion when Mr. MCCALLUM paid his surprise visit?--That may be.
And the report of Mr. MCCALLUM was that the Hospital was in a fairly satisfactory sanitary condition ?--I do not know that he knows very much about it. He is not a medical man and does not know medical requirements of an hospital. At the same time, I grant you, it is better than it used to be.
THE PRESIDENT-Why did you call it "an abomination of filth "?--When I wrote it was about the middle of February, and at that time it was in the condition I described, and if any more evidence is required on the point you can get it from the men who were visiting the Hospital at that time. At the middle of March, when my report went to the printers, the condition was praotically the same. If Mr. MCCALLUM's report was given before the 1st May then I say you should have given more attention to my report than Mr. MCCALLUM's, because I should doubt the correctness of Mr. MCCALLUM's report unless the Tung Wa Committee had got some idea that he was going to make a visit to the Hospital. I have seen it fifty times oftener than Mr. MCCALLUM, and at the 1st May, 1895, my description was accurate.
dix VI.
THE PRESIDENT-Mr. MCCALLUM's report is dated the 8th April, 1895. He was See Appea instructed on the 4th April to pay a surprise visit.
Mr. WHITEHEAD-I observe you say in your letter of 1st March, 1895, to the Colonial Surgeon forwarding your report on the Bubonic Plague in Hongkong in 1894, that you have written strongly concerning the condition of the Tung Wa, and that your objections to the institution are based entirely on professional grounds, &c.
WITNESS-Yes. I wrote a letter to the Government while on this same subject and my idea was the conversion of some of the old buildings, such as the cattle depôt, into a hospital, and to remove the present Tung Wa Hospital altogether from where it is now, to sell the land and buildings, if possible, to help to endow a hospital outside the town. It is not absolutely necessary, but it would be very convenient to have a mortuary or a deadhouse in the centre of the city where dead bodies could be taken and also dying people. The moment a medical man certified that a patient could be removed I think he ought to be removed from such a crowded locality to a hospital outside the town, where he would have an opportunity of getting better and would not be a danger to the people round about.
Dr. Ho KAI--That would apply to the Civil Hospital would it not ?--No; you would not have overcrowding in the Civil Hospital. The Civil Hospital is clean; it is very high up; it has any amount of light, fresh air and ventilation. There is a big