I
Branch of the British Red Cross for several months provided voluntary instructors for Lai Chi Kok Hospital and Mental Hospital to teach the patients reading, knitting, sewing, etc. There is also a Chinese lady who has been doing similar voluntary work at the Queen Mary Hospital and the Mental Hospital. During the last two years she has done very valuable work.
451. There are two rattan instructors giving classes to patients at the Mental Hospital and the Lai Chi Kok Hospital. One is being paid by the Government and the other from the Occupational Therapy Fund. Throughout the year, the Secretary of the British Red Society has helped to dispose of the finished rattan articles -a very necessary function.
PATHOLOGICAL (INCLUDING MORTUARIES)
452. The Pathological Institute under the direction of the Government Pathologist, consists of a main building where a large amount of diagnostic work and vaccine production is carried out. In addition to this there are two branches, one at the Kowloon Hospital which is responsible for most of the diagnostic work in Kowloon, and one at the Queen Mary Hospital which is mainly concerned with clinical pathology.
453. Routine work continued to grow in volume, and showed an overall increase of 39% as compared with the records for the previous year. This was due mainly to the greater number of Kahu tests carried out at the Institute and to A general expansion at the Kowloon branch, where the numbers of specimens dealt with now exceed the prewar figures for the whole Colony. At the Queen Mary Laboratory, where only one Senior Assistant can be spared, work has remained steady. 454. Other items of interest or significance during the year included the following:-
Kahn tests numbered 95,547-an increase of over 40,000: the frog test for pregnancy proved increasingly
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popular and requests for the Friedman test are becoming more and more infrequent: potency tests on samples of penicillin, introduced during the year, were both numerous and time consuming: and in an investigation of an out- break of abortion in the herd of a local dairy, Vibrio foetus was found in the foetus in 27 instances, and was also isolated in culture from the semen of a bull.
455. The figures in the following tables include those of the Kowloon and Queen Mary branches.
Table 36
Antal Number of Specimens Eramined,
Year
1930
8,721
1931
11,632
1932
17,208
1993
16,918
1934
22,271
1935
27,463
1936
38,797
1
1937
42,096
1988
44,710
1939
60,790
1946
51,957
1947
107,335
1948
120,775
1949
128,542
1950
1951
149,259 207,646
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