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NOTES AND QUERIES
the history and present significance of the Hospital. A Head of the Department of Home Affairs (the former Department of Chinese Affairs, and, even earlier, the Registrar-General or Protector of the Chinese) would possibly have his own unique evaluation of the institution. A medical doctor, a Neo-Marxist critic of elitism and the old compradore system, a sociologist or a historian all could find different things to emphasize in its history and development. The viewpoint of the writer of these notes is of one who has researched various aspects of Hong Kong history and is particularly interested in the historical development of the Chinese community in Hong Kong.
I have mentioned the various overlapping roles of the Hospital in the past. One might divide these roles into medical, educational, religious, social and quasi-political.
Tung Wah as a Medical Institution
As a Hospital there has been a continuity in its medical service from its opening in February, 1872, but there has been a significant shift from an initial exclusive use of traditional Chinese medical treatment to today's most advanced international medical practice.
The story of Tung Wah Hospital as a medical institution is a part of the medical history of Hong Kong and the relation and inter-action of traditional Chinese practice with that introduced from the Western medical tradition. The nineteenth century foreign trained medical officer in Hong Kong did not look with favour upon the type of treatment the sick received at Tung Wah. He had little sympathy with Chinese medical lore. As an institution receiving a government appropriation, by the creating Ordinance it came within the province of the Colonial Surgeon to comment on conditions at Tung Wah in his annual medical report. His very first report was critical as evidenced by the following extract,
There seems to be a large number of attendants, but I never found them at hand when they were wanted. ... The treatment of surgical cases shows an amount of ignorance which is much to be deplored. Seeing that the Institution was endowed with such a large sum of money by the Colonial Government, I think that the Directors might be asked to set apart one ward of their Hospital for the treatment of patients by foreign Doctors.*
* The Hong Kong Government Gazette, 1873 p.228, No. 85. Report of the Colonial Surgeon.