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This is the last Annual Report I shall furnish as I am retiring on pension. In my twenty-three years' service as the Head of the Civil Medical Department I think, it will be allowed, some improve- inents have been made. When I joined the Service in the Colony in 1873 I found my duties, besides general supervision of the Department, were Medical Officer to the Lock Hospital also to the Gaol, which was then also used as a Lunatic Asylum. I was also in charge of the sanitary supervision of the Colony with the assistance of two Sanitary Inspectors who had never been instructed in their duties which they performed in the best way they thought fit. I was also Meteorological Reporter- to the Government. I was also expected to attend on all the families of Subordinates of the Civil Service drawing under £100 a year. A very sufficiently complicated set of duties for one man.
I was also expected to make up £200 a year of my pay by private practice, this being the sun deducted from the pay of my predecessors for the privilege of having private practice. The Lock Hospital was the ouly decent building belonging to the Department. The Government Civil Hospital was a wretched okl bungalow formerly in occupation of a Mission wholly unfitted for the purpose. The Superintendent and Mr. BOTHELO, who was Apothecary, Government Analyst, Steward, Storekeeper and Clerk, with Mr. De Souza, Apothecary, Steward and Clerk of the Lock Hospital, were the only reliable subordinate officers in the Medical Department. The European war masters of the Hospital knew nothing of their duties and were drunken beachcombers and, as a rule, changed every few months, being dismissed for drunkenness and neglect of duty. The nurses were ignorant Chinese coolics; one of them afterwards the Chinese wardınaster A Log was a thorough, good man, had been about 15 years in the service, was a competent and careful dresser and post mortem assistant. This Institution was a wretched build- ing with a wretched nursing staff, no armoury worthy of the name, not even a lancet fit to open a boil. The medical comforts were unwholesome milk and the cheapest brands of wine and spirits which I reported upon to Government and refused to permit the patients to touch.
I had a good arinoury of my own which I lent to the Hospital till I could get sanction for one from Government.
But my great anxiety was my sanitary responsibilities and I was thankful, when after ten years, an appeal to the Secretary of State from the Surveyor General and myself, Mr. CHADWICK was sent out as Sanitary Commissioner, and his report resulted in the formation of a Sanitary Boar and relieved me of all further responsibility.
The flospital was reported on without effect, but it was blown down in the great typhoon of 1871. Then the vacant old Hotel d'Europe was taken for a Hospital, a much better building in every respect but still not suited for a hospital either in construction or situation. That building was burnt down in the great fire of 1878 and then began the building of the present Hospital by adding to the size of the Lock Hospital, not as satisfactory as I could wish but the best I was able to obtain.
The Colony has now a very decent Hospital which has had many improvements added to it and will have more in the near future; there is promise of a sufficient Medical Staff in the future. The Nursing Staff is all that can be desired. There are decent Lunatic Asylumns, an Infectious Distases Hospital and Hulk, a Public Mortuary and a fine building for the Quarters of the Nursing Staff. An Observatory has been built and has its own proper staff. The Lock Hospital. I regret to say, has been abolished and has become the female Venereal Wards of the Government Civil Hospital but only the very worst cases come in. The Sanitary Staff has been put on a proper footing, and the Sanitary Board indulges in less verbosity and does more business. What all my reports could not do the Plague Epidemic has done, opened the eyes of the Public and Government here and at Home to the deficiencies in the strength of the Medical Staff and the awful, unwholesome state of the Colony, and its continued presence does not permit them to forget. In the near future tliere is a good prospect for the place I have loved so well and in which I bave made so many friends, and so I say farewell with the profoundest regret.
I have the honour to be,
:
The Honourable
THE COLONIAL SECRETARY,
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Sir,
Your most obedient Servant,
PH. B. C. AYRES,
Colonial Surgeon.