of this Commission
The Report is
now submitted.
Of the five Commissioners Mr Stewart Lockhart, Mr A. M. Thomson & Fr Hokai agree in taking a favourable view of the Tung Wah Hospital.
Mr Chater and still more Mr Whitehead disagree with this view and considered that the Tung Wah Hospital failed to fulfil the purpose for which it had been made.
All 5 Commissioners agree that the Hospital's triple purpose (1) as a receptacle according to European notions (2) As a Death-house equivalent to an English Workhouse, (3) As a refuge for the destitute etc.
The first three Commissioners consider that the Hospital does fulfil the object of its incorporation (Report pp 8-9), that the accounts have been well kept, that the drainage is now satisfactory etc.
They suggest the following improvements: -
1) The appointment of a Chinese practitioner in Western Medical Science to reside at the Hospital and act chiefly as Registrar of Deaths and only to treat patients where requested.
2) The appointment generally as so to be a Resident Chinese Steward to act as superintendent to see that drainage, ventilation etc is satisfactory.
3) They wish Chinese nurses to be trained to look after the patients.
4) They advise fresh structural arrangements and recommend that you should give pecuniary assistance if necessary for these purposes. They further mention numerous small sanitary improvements, all of which should be insisted on and which I will enumerate later.
Mr Chater while agreeing with the foregoing remarks urges that the condition of the Tung Wah Hospital is, surgically and medically speaking, disgraceful.
and wishes that Western methods should be gradually introduced.
Mr Whitehead is of the opinion that not only have the medical arrangements not been satisfactory but also that the sanitary arrangements of the Hospital have been scandalously neglected, and that for the latter neglect at any rate someone should be made responsible. In spite of the Government's assertion in his present despatch that the blame attaches to the Government as a whole, I cannot but think that owing to the existence of $140 of the incorporating Ordinance successive Registrars General & Colonial Surgeons have been mostly to blame.
Mr Whitehead so far I fully agree that up to '94 the Sanitary Inspection of the Hospital was grossly neglected, but in view of the improved state of things which greater inspection has produced I am certain that violent remedies should not be applied and I am inclined to question whether the changes proposed by the Commission are not too great.
H 4,963-
(9)-71793-300-90