Copy.
328
Hongkong, 25th April, 1922.
The Honourable
The Secretary for Chinese Affairs,
I have read the Report of the Venereal Diseases
Commission on the Tang Wa Hospital.
While I think their criticism to be of value,
I believe that a more accurate knowledge of the real conditions would have prevented them from refusing to consider seriously this hospital as a factor in any anti-venereal campaign.
The basis for this belief is, firstly, that this institution is not, as I hope to show, carried on in such an insanitary and unscientific manner as the Report suggests; and, secondly, that the great importance of a hospital in which the native can be gently brought to see the value of European methods seems to have been overlooked.
A large number of Chinese come to the Tung Wa Hospital for European treatment who would not consider admission
to a hospital in which the more exact disciplinary methods of
an English hospital are enforced.
In 1911 some 68% of the patients chose native treatment as compared with 45% in 1920, This great change in favour of European methode bears strongly on this point. Again, it is of obvious and outstanding importance that those
patients who elect to have Chinese treatment (i.e. native treatment) should have some form of European supervision, for were this not so, patients would frequently suffer great and unnecessary pain which European treatment is able to relieve without actually removing the case from the native practitioner; and also in infective cases public health would be endangered. In order that these advantages may be obtained, it is of course true that in some respects wards may appear strange to eyes accustomed only to those of an English hospital.
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