Surgeons, whose constitutions are naturally exacting, still further add, in a small degree, to the duties of the Surgeon in charge.
8. Due to the addition to the Gaol Establishment, I have sole medical charge of the Police Force, a body of nearly 400 men. When first I took medical charge of the Police Force in 1873, it consisted of only a few married couples and their children, all living within a very circumscribed area. At present, I have to attend thirty-one married couples with seventy-five children, inhabiting stations and lodgings scattered all over the town at long distances from one another, with a large amount of sickness amongst them from climatic effects and insalubrious quarters to which I have frequently referred in my annual report.
As regards the Police alone, my duties have multiplied five-fold. It has been the same with the European subordinate officers of Departments of Government, the members of which drawing salaries under £400, with their families, are required to attend, having largely increased from year to year.
7. As Consulting Surgeon to the Government Civil Hospital, and as Head of the Medical Department, it is my business to visit that Establishment daily. In connexion not only with the treatment of out-patients, but with its general supervision and management. The labours of the Colonial Surgeon in the regular daily attendance on the outdoor patients at the Hospital have, also of late years, grown enormously with the increase of population and the increase of confidence in English medical treatment.