242
Medical.
38. It might seem at a first glance that much that we have said in relation to the Engineering Faculty will apply with equal force to the Medical Faculty. There were the same ideals of the founders to give an awaking China the benefits of Western science; there have been the same unforeseen developments of efficiently conducted rival institutions in China proper; and there has been, but even more markedly than in the case of Engineering, that same diffidence on
diffidence on the part of graduates to take their knowledge into China.
39. It is therefore clear that, if our recommendations in the two cases are not only different but almost antithetical, some justification for such a view will be called for.
40. We need not dwell upon the fine traditions of the old Hong Kong Medical College in the days before it became merged in the infant University.
But we maintain that the present general standard of medical knowledge and practice in the Colony is today a very high one; and that this is very largely due to the presence in our midst of the Medical Faculty of the University. It is not only that in the three clinical Professors the Colony possesses consultants of a very high order; what private practitioners and Government doctors would alike admit is that the University provides a stimulus and an atmosphere which could ill be spared.
41. Medical graduates of the University are registrable under the General Medical Council and we consider that the periodical scrutiny carried out by represen- tatives of that Council must be of great value to the Faculty, and that the prestige of such a recognition is not to be despised. In such circumstances we will not be expected to say anything about the course of instruction, except to record the fact that it seems to be universally agreed that, clinically speaking, the doctors turned out by the University may be considered to be thoroughly well trained.
42. We have carefully considered the question of what becomes of all those- highly trained doctors. From all sides we have been told that private practice in the Colony is reaching saturation point and it has even been suggested to us that further local registration of Hong Kong graduates (except for the few required by the University itself or by the Government) might well be restricted or withheld until, say, five years after graduation. With the same end in view it has been urged that by some means or other more students from China proper should be induced to take the course; and, what is even more difficult, to return to China after graduation.
43. As regards local over-crowding of the profession, we would remark that judged by European standards the ratio of practitioners to population is still quite small. The important factor is of course the adherence of a large part of the population to Chinese harbalism. Such adherence is diminishing and surely must diminish further with the increased supply of modern-trained doctors. We cannot believe that anyone will deplore such a process.
44. We feel, however, that the high standard attained by the product of Hong Kong University would do more for the prestige of the Colony if larger numbers reached the Chinese educational centres, and while, to a great extent, the recruitment of medical students and their ultimate destinations should be left to the ordinary law of supply and demand, we think that some encouragement should be given by scholarships to students from central and north China who would, we presume, return to their birth-places. Given this encouragement for a start we are assured that parents and institutions in China will in time realize that we can give value for money.
45. We have already suggested that the whole the academic atmosphere of the Medical Faculty.
Colony derives benefits from No
one can teach a subject