191
The paying patients exclusive of Police and seamen sent by the Harbour Master brought in $4,637.34 as compared with $3,441.93 in 1880. This class of patients have been yearly increasing.
This year
since April, Surgeon BLENNERHASSETT and Surgeon Major MURRAY, A.M.D., have been Acting Superintendents during the absence on leave of the Superintendent. Surgeon Major MURRAY has prepared and sent in the usual report with his opinions on the working of the Establishment. I beg to call attention to his recommendation concerning the classing and pay of the Chinese Nurses in the Hospital, and I think, if it were carried out, it would be of great benefit to the working of this institution. As regards his remarks concerning the Quarters, Hospital space, &c., all these have been provided for in the proposed plans before mentioned as having been sanctioned by the Home Authorities, but how long it will be before they are carried out, I can form no idea, as the matter has now been under discussion more than thirteen years.
SMALL POX HOSPITAL.
Table IX shews the number of admissions and deaths during the year; there were seven admissions and three deaths, all in the first five months of the year. This Establishment is also under the Superintendent of the Government Civil Hospital. The admissions for the past nine years have been as follows:
Year.
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1879
1880 1881
Admissions.
7
6
5
18
25
13
29 7
The admissions from Small Pox only occur as a rule in the winter months; the past season from November 1881 to date no cases have been brought in.
VICTORIA GAOL.
This year there has been a greater number of prisoners admitted to Gaol than any year in the past nine, except 1873, as the following figures shew, but the daily average number of prisoners is far greater than in any of the previous years as the following figures also shew.
Total number of prisoners
Daily average number of prisoners.
admitted in Gaol.
1873.
4.656
388
1874.
.3,645
350.04
1875.
.4,023
374.06
1876.
..4,062
432.60
1877
.3,964
395.22
1878.
..3,803
519.22
1879.
.8,665
576.13
1880.
...3,530
575.25
1881.
.4,150
666
Notwithstanding this increase in the daily average number of prisoners, the amount of sickness among them has been somewhat smaller, 297 only having been admitted to Hospital, as compared with 316 in 1880, but still the number is very high, being more than double what it used to be; in 1873 it was only 148. The accommodation for the sick is very limited and in 1873 was decidedly insufficient.
Of the 297 admitted to Hospital, 51 were admitted as soon as sent into the Gaol, as is shewn in Table XII, A.
gave
is
This is the only Public Establishment in which the dry earth system is of any service, and even here, owing to the nature of the building, it is very inefficiently carried out, for reasons that I in my last Annual Report, though every thing is done that can be done to make it of as much service as possible. The dry earth used, being only of decomposed granite, is very unsuitable for the purpose, a very poor deodoriser and certainly has no disinfectant properties whatever. I was six years in charge of Guols in India in which the dry earth system only was used, but the earth used was of the best possible kind, and the enormous space at command allowed it to be carried out with the greatest efficiency. I am quite aware of the value of the system in places for which it was designed; it has never been any where in force in crowded towns. In India or any where else, it is a very valuable
system in its place, but in a crowded town, even if its use were possible, which it is not, it is of as much use as a bag of gold would be on a desert island. It is equally incompatible with efficiency in
three storied building composed of cells.
One Chinese prisoner only was flogged this year, and that was for an assault on the Superintendent with a crank handle with an iron chain wound round it.
There were only two deaths this year. One a European suffering from consumption died suddenly in his cell from hemorrhage from the lungs; the other case was a Chinaman who came into Gaol in a half starved condition.
The complaints admitted to Hospital have been chiefly Bowel complaints, General Debility, Fevers, Abscess and Syphilis. The admissions to Hospital do not represent those that were under treatment; there are many old and debilitated prisoners who have been nothing more thau beggars, whom it is impossible to get any work out of or to punish in any other way than by confinement and I am afraid it is who are far better off in Gaol than they probably have been in all their lives before. mostly so with the majority of the Chinese prisoners.
Table XII, B. gives a list of opium smokers consuming one mace and upwards daily, admitted to Gaol during the past year. In no case has any opinn been allowed, and no treatment given unless they were suffering from some other complaint necessitating it; even then no opium was used in the treatment. The largest consumer was one who smoked 8 mace per diem. He weighed 86 lbs. on admission and 89 lbs. at the end of a month, (the weights were always taken without clothes,) and this man received no other treatment than the regular diet. I have come to the conclusion that opium smoking is a luxury of a very harmless description, and that the only trouble arising from its indulgence is a waste of money that should be applied to necessaries. Eight mace is equivalent to an ounce and twenty nine grains, a quantity of opium sufficient to poison a hundred men, smoked by one man in a day, and this he has been doing for twenty years; that is to say he has consumed in smoke in that time about £1,000, and for this indulgence he has to deny himself and his family many absolute necessuries. The list contains 35 opium smokers, and the amount smoked between them daily was 844 mace or $7 worth of opium. The result of my observations this year is only to confirm all I said on the subject of opium smoking in my report for 1880.
There has been much sickness amongst the Gaol Officials and this will continue, I fear, as long as they have such unwholesome quarters, but it is not only in the Gaol that this is the case, as I have observed before; they are compelled to live with their families in the same unwholesome style of building as a Chinaman, the gambling in Chinese house property having caused all the small houses formerly occupied by Europeans to be swept away, and as a consequence no one, getting sixty dollars a month or under, even if a single man, can now afford to live anywhere in Hongkong other than in a house built for Chinese, and this I consider is one of the great grievances resulting from the speculations in the past two years in land. Many of these houses remain unlet or only partially let, and numbers of a difficulty for them are occupied by Europeans who can get no other quarters. It is now becoming those Europeans who are well to do, to get houses except at the most exorbitant rents.
TEMPORARY LUNATIC ASYLUM.
This is still in the wretched dilapidated buildings that it has been for the last three years, and the lunatics have to be removed, in the event of any gale threatening, to the Police cells for safety as I described in my report for 1880.
This
year
there were ten admissions besides one remaining of those confined in 1880. Two of these were not properly to be classed as lunatics but were suffering from brain disease and were so noisy and violent that, there being no proper place for them in the Civil Hospital without causing disturbance and distress to other patients, they had to be removed here for treatment, and one other case was a violent patient suffering from Mania á Potu; all these were dismissed cured. One of the patients was a medical man who was afterwards sent to his own home by his friends.
But one remains now in the Asylum, a Malay, suffering from dementia.
Some were sent by their Consuls or the Governinent to their own country, or removed by friends. There were no deaths.
TUNG WA HOSPITAL.
The total number of patients admitted to this Chinese Hospital during this year was 1,292; of → these 569 died. The number of out patients treated was 79,845. The large mortality is owing chiefly
to the great dislike, the Chinese have, to detention in Hospital except they are almost in the last extremity; 152 dead bodies were brought into the Hospital besides those above mentioned.
The number of cases admitted, suffering from Small Pox, was 11, of these 5 diod, they were mostly infants.
The number of vaccinations performed in the City of Victoria and Villages of Hongkong was 1,722. The vaccinations are efficiently and carefully done.
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