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men who would accept such a position.
In like manner the students, who have certain duties assigned to them in the clinical ward of the hospitals, would object to taking orders from a lady doctor.
Dr. Mitchell continued that Dr. Ho Kai volunteered the information that the Chinese subscribers would not sanction any disturbance of the present superintendency of the wards, making it very clear that he had not consulted Dr. Ho Kai on ‘our little internal difficulty’. General medicine was thereby closed to the lady doctor, but a concession was made: she was allowed two clinic sessions per week for women and children at the Nethersole Hospital. With this, Dr. Mitchell trusted that Mr. Cousins would ‘not be troubled with any further complaints from this quarter’.
Although in Britain women doctors had won the battle to train in general medicine, the restriction in role in Hong Kong was defined in terms culturally appropriate to Chinese patients and was exacerbated by the persistent patriarchal attitudes of Dr. Sibree's male colleagues. In 1908, Dr. Gibson suggested that if Dr. Sibree wanted to expand her work, then she could set up a ‘sanitarium for consumptives, convalescent home, home for incurables,’ and noted that he had ‘no desire to give up work which has been my sphere for the past ten years’. This statement powerfully differentiates the female doctor's role as caring for the chronically ill, and the male's as intervention by surgery, consistent with Broom's view of ‘masculine medicine’.
Mr. Cousins continued to be troubled by Dr. Sibree's dissatisfaction with her role in Hong Kong, even when Mr. Pearce asserted the support of the District Committee for their lady doctor: ‘Dr. Sibree must at all costs be protected in her rights and privileges as a co-worker with us all’. One suspects that open communication with Dr. Gibson was difficult, leading Dr. Sibree to ask for intercession from London through private correspondence, both personally and by way of her father. Mr. Pearce in October, 1906, commented that
I shall fully and fearlessly act up to my own sense of duty as respects Dr. Gibson. The state of his health and the extraordinary excitement and agitation to which he seemed prone when his will was crossed by colleagues in the mission are the only excuses I