COLONY NURSING
EARLY HISTORY RECALLED AT GRADUATION
WORK OF HOSPITALS
The early history of nursing as a profession for Chinese women and girls was related by Miss M. Ward, Matron at the Alice Memorial and Affiliated Hospitals, at a graduation ceremony for nurses held on Saturday evening at Ying Wah Girls' School, an institution managed by the London Church Missionary Society.
It was in the Alice Memorial Hospital, then at Hollywood Road, and the Nethersole Hospital at Bonham Road, Miss Ward said, that the first Chinese probationer nurses made a beginning.
The first-named institution was opened in 1887, and recounting the difficulties encountered in those early days by the first European matron, Mrs. Stevens, who came out from Home four years afterwards, Miss Ward took the following quotation from Mrs. Stevens:
"When preparing to take up the matronship of the Alice Memorial Hospital in 1891, I was warned that nursing as understood by English people did not exist. In the women's ward there was already a matron, a Chinese lady Mrs. Kwan, a woman of wonderful intelligence and ability, born, it would seem, hundreds of years before her time. But of nursing as we understand it, of course she knew very little. Mrs. Kwan had also commenced to train as helper another Chinese lady, Mrs. Wong, the widow of a preacher. The cleaning of the wards was done by coolies. In the male wards no woman's foot had ever trod. I entered tremblingly - at first only to take pulses and look round. It was no comfort to be told that the patients would not know whether I was a man or a woman. Nursing has never obtained a footing in our male wards nor, as far as I can see, ever will; indeed, unless men can be trained for this work, I do not even think it would be desirable. The coolies wait upon the men and some things the students do for them. Of late days, an intelligent young lad has been made ward master and gives medicines while I see that they have bedding and clothing."
EARLY DIFFICULTIES
Those whom Mrs. Stevens had as helpers were few in number, and they came and went frequently. It was difficult to get them to overcome a natural aversion when approaching certain grim tasks. The opening of the Nethersole Hospital in 1893 still found the Matron shorthanded, but the few additional assistants who came forward at this moment showed themselves earnest, if not brilliant. A little later, another girl who had been educated at the London Mission Girls' Boarding School and who had been a teacher under Miss Davies for three years, volunteered her services; and thus it came about that the first probationer nurse, in South China at any rate, entered the Hospital.
But things did not go too smoothly for the new probationer. Non-Christians and also many Christian people thought that nursing was not a proper occupation for a respectable woman, and much that was false was said about this young pioneer and others who followed later. They shed many bitter tears and suffered a good deal of persecution until people began to get used to the idea.