Sir,
C.O.
Enclosure 1.
608
40439
Hong Kong, 4th October, 1907.
REG 18 NOV 07
I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of your letter of 3rd instant, forwarding a copy of His Excellency the Governor's minute of the 24th ultimo, referring to my action in deciding that it was unnecessary to proceed to Tai Po in the late evening of the 17th ultimo.
I enclose my cheque for $50.00 in refund of Dr. Aubrey's fee, as directed by His Excellency, but under protest, and subject to my appeal to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
I do not admit the premises on which His Excellency bases his severe comments on my action. It was not the "call of duty". I did not regard it as such, and do not so regard it now. The request of Mr. Eves that I should proceed to Tai Po, a distance of eighteen miles, eleven of them by road, over roads terribly broken up by a rainstorm that followed a typhoon two days before, and over which I already had gone that day, at 6:30 P.M., just when darkness was setting in, referred a question to my judgment as to whether the case was so urgent as to require this. Mr. Ross has been ill for six days, and this was the first information sent to me regarding his illness.
It was not a case of sudden urgent illness, regarding which it might have been difficult from the symptoms described to arrive at a probable diagnosis. Mr. Eves's description presented a clinical picture with which I am familiar from daily contact with it.
My judgment was founded on an experience of nearly nineteen years in this Colony, over ten of them in the Government Service, in course of which I have had to deal with many hundreds of cases almost precisely similar. With clear knowledge of what I was doing, I assured Mr. Eves that the symptoms