CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG
209
advice or even treatment of a sort, no doubt for certain small advantages, though I have no proof at all that this was so.
SUPPLIES OF DRUGS AND DRESSINGS
At the time of our surrender, our hospital was well stocked with drugs and dressings. Except for very small quantities in categories which we could well afford to spare, the Japanese did not confiscate or ask for any of our stocks. In the parcels we received from our friends in Hong Kong from time to time were included small amounts of special drugs and preparations which were extremely valuable to us in treating patients.
My record of the supply by the Japanese of anti-diphtheritic serum given in a previous section is accurate. At various times during the three full years of my charge, small quantities of drugs and dressings were supplied by the Japanese. Unfortunately, I have no records now on this subject, but my memory is clear that deliveries were irregular, quantities were so small as almost to be negligible, and such drugs as arrived were non-specific in their actions. Earlier, I recorded in this account the measures taken to make sure that drugs with specific action, for example, the sulpha drugs, were issued only in cases where they could be expected to turn the scales in favour of a sick patient. Through such careful conservation, aided by luck, we reached the date of our release with small stocks of essential specific drugs in hand and diminishing quantities of dressings still available, though I would not have wanted to have had to hold out much longer. I must not be understood to be saying here that we had all that we needed in the way of drugs and dressings. This was far from being the case.
We were expressly forbidden to send drugs to the P.O.W. camps, and the only possible reason that I can think of for this must have been Japanese unwillingness to admit that the camps required anything more than they themselves thought fit to provide. The prohibition fitted in with their persistent refusal to allow me, or the other doctors in Bowen Road, to consult with the doctors in the P.O.W. camps regarding the allocation of our resources and methods of collaboration between hospital and camps in the medical management and treatment of the diseases which beset us. We did get some drugs into camps carried by volunteer patients whom we were discharging from hospital, but the amounts were never large and