I am not prepared to recommend an expenditure of over £500 a year for the services of a Surgeon, which are so rarely required; the risk that is run is no more than is incurred in many County Hospitals at home. In the largest work-house infirmaries at home there is only one resident Surgeon, and in many there is no resident Surgeon. In the largest Gaols at home there is only one resident Surgeon, though their infirmaries often have more than fifty beds, and the work is far more arduous. The wealthiest man must run this risk, even when retaining his own private Surgeon; he may not be on the spot at the moment his services are required.
The situation chosen for the Hospitals is as good as could be procured in the Colony. The new Lock Hospital will not, as formerly, be visible from the upper roads, and very few Europeans make use of that part of the Queen's Road from which it is visible or the women approach the Hospital. There are few visitors to the Hospital in the morning when the women attend at the Lock, and they are not of a class likely to be shocked by the sight of them. Some nuisances are unavoidable; the new buildings cannot be constructed without noise, and if the Hospital were so far removed from the working part of the town as to be beyond reach of noise, it would be so much farther for the sick to come or be brought.
Table V shows the diseases of those admitted to Hospital during the year, as usual. Fevers and bowel complaints are most numerous, and after them diseases of the chest.
Table VII shows the number of admissions during each month of the year, which were greatest in the months of May, July, August, and October. The total admissions were 1,071 as compared with 1,287 in 1878; the deaths being 55 this year and 50 last.
Table VIII shows the number of dead bodies brought to the Hospital; the number increased by one as compared with 1878.
SMALL POX HOSPITAL.
At the beginning of the year some rooms in the ruins of the old Civil Hospital were used as a Small Pox Hospital, and it was then in charge of Dr. WHARRY, but these ruins being pulled down at the end of this year, an old house in Hollywood Road was made use of, and as it was a considerable distance off the Hospital, I took charge. Now a good airy building is provided on a site not far from the Civil Hospital, and Dr. WHARRY again has charge. There were thirteen admissions and one death as compared with seven admissions and no deaths in 1878.
VICTORIA GAOL.
There has been a considerable increase in the number of admissions to the Gaol Hospital, and a great increase in the number of sick altogether, but I am happy to say a great decrease in the mortality; only six deaths against fourteen last year.
A great number of Europeans suffered from Diarrhoea, but these were principally merchant seamen who had been leading a riotous life on shore and were arrested for drunkenness.
Among the Chinese prisoners there are a great number of half-starved and debilitated creatures, who have to be taken into Hospital in many cases at once, on admission to Gaol, and some serve nearly their whole time in Hospital; these furnish the cases of Fever, Diarrhea, Anaemia, and Debility. There was a considerable outbreak of Mumps in the Gaol; 21 cases are recorded in Table X.
The prisoners, as a rule, improve in health during their stay in Gaol, and some are hardly recognizable on their departure as the miserable wretches they were when they came in. A good deal of trouble is caused by the numbers who come in suffering from itch or swarming with lice, many of them so filthy as to have large sores in their heads from this cause. I have somewhere seen it said that Chinese do not suffer so much from corns as Europeans, on account of the peculiar make of their shoes, but that statement is not at all borne out by many of those received in the Gaol. They are not troubled, as a rule, much with corns on the side of the foot, but the peculiarity of their shoes seems to be to create corns on all the knuckles of the toes, and a good many suffer from bunions.
The opium smokers have been treated as heretofore, that is to say, their habit entirely ignored, and I have had no trouble with them at all. A Chinese merchant was one day lamenting that his son gave him much trouble owing to his giving way to this vice. I recommended him to send him to Gaol for debt and I would undertake his cure. The only trouble in the opium smoker's case is his want of strength of will to give up the habit unless he is compelled. I cannot find that its discontinuance produces any serious effects, the most annoying being the want of sleep for the first few nights; sometimes they complain of slight Diarrhea, but it rarely requires any treatment.
There were four executions. In no case was the neck dislocated, neither was there any struggle; the shock of the fall caused insensibility, and strangulation completed the execution; the drop is now a full six feet,