253. Lest the writer should be misunderstood, it might be well to make it clear that it is fully appreciated that Chinese medicine has made several particularly valuable contributions towards the relief of pain and suffering. Unfortunately, however, it is bound up with a vast proportion of sheer quackery.
254. The trend in the Chinese hospitals in Hong Kong is definitely towards the acceptance by a discerning public of Western rather than Eastern medicine. This is typified in the increasing number of even poor, illiterate persons who are willing to receive treatment from properly registered medical practitioners instead of from herbalists.
255. About 600 out-patients attend each day at the Tung Wah and Kwong Wah Hospitals and half that number at the Tung Wah Eastern Hospital.
256. The Tung Wah possesses 472 beds, the Tung Wah Eastern 270 and the Kwong Wah 352 making 1,094 in all three hospitals.
257. The only one not grossly overcrowded is the Tung Wah Eastern. In the other two many of the wards contain more than double the number of patients they were originally meant to hold, and it is necessary for the medical staff to pick their way carefully over prostrate forms. In many cases, it is actually difficult to approach the patient lying on his bed, such conditions militating against proper examination of cases.
258. At one time during the year under review the writer encountered sixty-six puerperal women sharing forty beds. This extremely undesirable feature could only be dealt with by bringing pressure to bear on the Chinese directors to limit admissions to the lying-in wards to the extent of one patient per bed.
259. In another instance the writer found nineteen aged and sick women sharing seven beds in a small room that could hardly be designated as being a ward.
260. In yet a third case the writer encountered sixty-one patients in a ward equipped with and large enough for twelve beds, the majority of the patients lying on the floor.
261. These instances are given, not in a critical spirit against the Chinese directors who have been solely responsible for the administration of the hospitals and who have had an extremely difficult situation to cope with, but to indicate the wisdom shown by Government in appointing in 1938 a Hospital Committee to advise on the needs of the situation and, with the consent of the Chinese directors of the hospitals, a medical committee of mixed Government medical officers and the Chinese principal directors to act as the executive body for this group of hospitals.
262. Little by little and with the willing cooperation of all concerned, it should be possible to remove this blot of public life and to provide reasonable hospital facilities for the sick poor of these territories.
263. A whole book could be written upon the subject of the Chinese hospitals in Hong Kong, but it is desirable to preserve a reasonable balance in this Report and it might be as well to end this section on a hopeful note that better times are coming for the mass of sick and needy.
264. Further details as to admissions, discharges, deaths, diseases, etc., are included in the appendix to this Report. It must be remembered that while at least a third of all in-patients in the Chinese hospitals are treated by herbalist "doctors", it would be unwise to attach much importance to the list of diseases treated.
265. The nine Chinese public dispensaries which work in the Island and Kowloon give Western medical treatment only. Their history and their functions have been chronicled in earlier reports, and only an outline of their work during 1938 is given in the appended tables.
266. 52,920 vaccinations against smallpox and 24,552 inoculations against cholera were given during the year at the Chinese hospitals.