CO129-323 - Acting Governor May Governor Nathan - 1904 [6-7] — Page 520

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not possible to insist on their being so in the case of the

small-pox hospital for Naval patients.

4.

Up to the end of the year 1902 the Chinese

were allowed to treat small-pox cases in their own hospital,

called the Tung Wa, which is situated in the middle of the

town; since then all reported cases have been treated on the

Hospital Ship "Hygeia". In 1903 a new branch building of the

Tung Wa, the cost of which was defrayed by the voluntary sub-

scriptions of Chinese residents, was opened for infectious

diseases at Kennedy Town, to the West of Victoria, on a site

closely adjoining the Government Infectious Diseases Hospital

there. It was intended by the Government, which granted the site

for this new building, that its use should be confined to the

reception of plague patients. Partly owing to the erroneous

use of the word 'small-pox' for infectious diseases in some

Government letters and partly owing to some new Directors of

the Tung Wa not knowing what were the intentions of the Govern-

ment with regard to this branch Chinese Hospital, there is no

doubt that many of the subscriptions for it were given in the

belief that it was to be a small-pox hospital. There is con-

sequently much disappointment at the Government restricting

the use of the building to plague patients, for whom it is

not required except in very bad plague years, and I have

recently been approached by the Directors of the Tung Wa

with the request that I should allow it to be put to the use

that many of the subscribers intended. At a meeting I had on

the subject with some of these Directors they stated that

treatment on the "Hygeia" was distasteful to the Chinese and

that consequently they were loth to report cases of small-pox.

5.