518
not possible to insist on their being so in the case of the
small-pox hospital for Naval patients.
4.
Up to the end of the year 1902 the Chinese
were allowed to treat small-pox cases in their own hospital,
called the Tung Wa, which is situated in the middle of the
town; since then all reported cases have been treated on the
Hospital Ship "Hygeia". In 1903 a new branch building of the
Tung Wa, the cost of which was defrayed by the voluntary sub-
scriptions of Chinese residents, was opened for infectious
diseases at Kennedy Town, to the West of Victoria, on a site
closely adjoining the Government Infectious Diseases Hospital
there. It was intended by the Government, which granted the site
for this new building, that its use should be confined to the
reception of plague patients. Partly owing to the erroneous
use of the word 'small-pox' for infectious diseases in some
Government letters and partly owing to some new Directors of
the Tung Wa not knowing what were the intentions of the Govern-
ment with regard to this branch Chinese Hospital, there is no
doubt that many of the subscriptions for it were given in the
belief that it was to be a small-pox hospital. There is con-
sequently much disappointment at the Government restricting
the use of the building to plague patients, for whom it is
not required except in very bad plague years, and I have
recently been approached by the Directors of the Tung Wa
with the request that I should allow it to be put to the use
that many of the subscribers intended. At a meeting I had on
the subject with some of these Directors they stated that
treatment on the "Hygeia" was distasteful to the Chinese and
that consequently they were loth to report cases of small-pox.
5.