NOTES AND QUERIES
223
sity so many and interesting cases as in these 2 hours in your hospital". Cancer, sarcoma, psychosis, compound fractures, eye diseases, bone tuberculosis, kidney affections (probably exaggerated by Chinese drugs), the most malicious skin and venereal affections, complications from opium smoking (demanding difficult operations on the urinary tract), infectious diseases, meningitis, malaria, tropical and parasitical sickness, snake bites, elephantiasis and monstrosities have also been treated here.
Generally speaking we treated one third of all our patients free and one third at reduced fees. On the average the cost of drugs paid by the patient is 19 cents per visit. We have been generously supplied by British drug firms with Sulphanilamide and so have had the means to help with the most advanced scientific methods.
On the 4th of December 1938 we received our first victims from air raids, the 18th was the next with 10 very bad cases; one boy 10 years old died in the arms of his mother when she brought him in with his back completely torn off. We operated that day and night, and the next day, without pause. We were extremely sorry to lose two more lives; one a girl 14 years old with 10 wounds through her intestines, and a young woman with different large abdominal wounds. Another young woman got a bomb splinter in her face and lost her right eye and 5 teeth. We were able to provide her, after recovering, with an artificial eye and 5 gold teeth, so she looks quite nice again. We also had a mother with several small children who had an open splintered fracture of the lower jaw bone, a 10 inches long wound in the abdomen and a compound fracture of the left heel, also some other smaller wounds, 15 all together. We removed a dozen splinters from the jaw, and to our great joy she recovered and can use her mouth and can walk again normally. We had not only wounded from bombing incidents as the planes very often came down and machine gunned the fishermen in the junks and sampans, or small gunboats approached the coast and fired on the people. An old fisherman with an arm splintered by 5 bullets we were able to release as cured after some months.
In contrast to a former rather suspicious attitude of the authorities towards a foreign-run hospital is the present appreciation of the civil and army leaders. We have the honour to have the head of the local government now as a member of our Committee of Management.