379
In Enclosure 111 will be found a report by the Medical Officer of Victoria Gaol. From this it will be seen that the admissions to hospital were 158 less than in 1896. Of those treated in the hospital 27 were suffering from malarial fever and 32 from debility, Flogging as now inflicted, viz., with the birch produces no contusion of the subcutaneous tissues, the usual result being a superficial redness which soon passes off and does not interfere with the prisoner's labour; formerly when the rattan was used the men invariably had to go to hospital, some for a longer some for a shorter period, the contused wounds occasionally resulting in the production of gluteal abscesses.
The total number of whippings was 141 as compared with 206 floggings in 1896.
There were four deaths from natural causes, two Chinamen committed suicide by hanging them- selves in their cells; and there were no exccutions.
TUNG WAH. HOSPITAL.
With regard to this institution a Commission appointed by His Excellency Sir WILLIAM ROBINSON, G.C.M.G., fully inquired into its working and organisation and the report of this Commission. together with the evidence taken before it, was issued from the Government Printing Office in September, 1896.
One result of this was the appointment of Dr. THOMSON as Visiting Surgeon to this Institution. His report for the year 1897 will be found in Enclosure IV.
In conjunction with Dr. THOMSON Mr. CHUNG KING-UE, who has been trained in Western Medicine at Tientsin and was subsequently House Surgeon for eight years at the Alice Memorial Hospital, was appointed Resident Surgeon to this hospital.
The existence of this hospital in which it appears that more than four-fifths of the inmates are treated by so-called Chinese methods, is somewhat anomalous in a British Colony.
It is not for me to discuss the matter from the point of view of the statesman who, doubtless, has to consider the desirability of humouring to some extent the prejudices of the Chinese population. who in this Colony out-number the Europeans by the proportion of twenty to one.
It is my duty to look at the matter from a medical point of view and there can be very little doubt from that point of view that the so-called Chinese medical methods are really nothing but empericism or quackery; as DYER BALL states in his work on "Things Chinese":-
"Medical works claim attention from the numerous writers on this branch. The oldest work was written several centuries before the Christian era.
It has been supposed from their minute account of the human body that the Chinese, at one time. practised dissection. If so, however, the remembrance of it has long been forgotten, and their medical works are characterised by groundless theories."
Dr. WILSON, Inspector of Naval Hospitals and Fleets in his work "Medical Notes on China"
states-
A
"The healing art among the Chinese, with much pretension to learning and practical power, is in a very rude and insufficient state; it is. in fact, a chaos of unfounded conceits, contradictory notions, and pompous phrases.
They appear to have fallen into a petrified fixedness which nothing but the most powerful external agents can move.
"They affect to understand temperaments by the pulse. When one of the medical sages was requested to declare that of the writer, he laid his fingers along the wrist, appeared to think deeply while he interrogated the impulse, and, after a little, said, gravely, that the element of metal predominated.
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Surgery, in any proper sense of the word, has no existence among the Chinese; as might have been concluded, without observation, from their total ignorance of anatomy. They set and support fractures of the extremities, after the fashion of an ordinary farrier; and they are moderately success- ful in the reduction of simple dislocations; but anything requiring knowledge of structure, or the nice application of mechanical power, is beyond their reach.
Together with the bone-setting and puncturing noticed above, Chinese operative surgery consists almost entirely in the application of moxas, which, although it was not witnessed by the writer, is said to be practised extensively. Of scientific principles, it is needless to say, that it is destitute."
Dr. THOMSON goes very fully into the arrangements in forre at this institution.
The patients who apply for admission are mostly poor people of the artisan class: coolies, etc.. and nearly all have an ingrained dread of the foreigner and his so-called Western methods.
The doctors are not trained at all as we understand training, and are really nothing but quacks ; they do not pretend to have any knowledge of surgical treatment, indeed, there is no such thing in the hospital as a surgical instrument; their panacea for all surgical injuries and diseases being the inevitable pitch-plaister; they never administer chloroform.