[ XXXIV]
Leung On and others on the Committee of the "I-Ts'z" hospital present a petition.
l'etitioners, on the evening of the 20th inst., paid a visit to the hospital, and there read His Worship's orders that in future they must on no account remove the dying out of the hospital, but that on a better principle they must take the sick who happen to be in the same compartment with a dying patient and remove them to another room, that they may not be under the painful necessity of gazing on death, and that if any one presumed to give orders to convey a dying patient out of the hospital, his offence would be no light one, and according to English law would be punishable as manslaughter; the same rule would apply also to the removal of the dangerously ill, if their death was hastened thereby.
Petitioners have read this proclamation with a good deal of dismay. The command not to remove the dying out of the hospital they acknowledge to be excellent, but petitioners never have removed the dying out of the hospital, though they have now and then removed them into other rooms.
His Worship's orders are, that to separate the two, the living should be removed from the dying. Petitioners would humbly submit that the better plan is to remove the dying from the living. For instance, if there are several patients in one room, and because one of them becomes dangerously ill, therefore all the other patients who are not dangerously ill are to be removed, perhaps one or two of these latter will be made dangerously ill by the removal, and then another removal will have to take place, and thus one removal will involve another.
Petitioners therefore will find it very difficult to carry out this rule, and they fear that when His Worship next makes his inspection, there will be only too good grounds for indignation at their want of success.
Again, the usual custom in China is when a patient becomes a dangerously ill either to remove him to the large court or to another house, that he may meet with a comfortable end. Rich and poor alike agree in objecting to the death of their parents taking place in the bed room, and one and all conform to this babit of removing the dying; nor in removing a man whose illness admits of no hope of recovery is any charge of cruelty incurred thereby, and no suspicion attaches of wishing to precipitate the death of the patient.
Yet seeing the repeated warnings that His Worship's proclamation gives, that those who remove the dying, and those who presume to give orders for their removal, are guilty of manslaughter, petitioners dare not in the face of such severe laws run any personal risk.
The hospital was instituted expressly for the relief of the Chinese poor who are under English jurisdiction, and though in the money we have contributed and the action we have taken our intentions were of the best nature, yet in return we are subjected to blame and punishment. If such be the result of their first acts, petitioners fear their future proceedings will be still more liable to blame.
Now one of the regulations agreed upon on a former occasion in connection with the hospital says "The general conduct of affairs and the framing of regulations will devolve on the Chinese, in whose hands the management will be." This regulation was submitted to and approved of by His Worship, and at a personal interview, petitioners had the honour to receive his sanction to leaving the framing of regulations and the management of affairs in the hands of the Chinese, so long as they kept the place cleanly and in good order,
In consequence petitioners made contributions and took measures for opening a hospital.