300
Reports of Medical Missions.
JUNE,
the Sagalien up to Miao where the Songari joins it, offers a most in- viting field of exploration to the navigator, the geographer and the naturalist, fully equal to any not yet investigated. We hope it will not long remain unvisited by some of the national ships of Great Britain or the United States in these waters. With a small steamer and a tender, the entire circuit could be made in a few months; the latter vessel remaining on the coast to investigate, while the steamer took her way up the unknown waters of the Sagalien, ex- amining its capabilities and productions, and learning what manner of people dwell on its banks. We do not read of any rapids or falls which would prevent a steamer proceeding up as far as Pétune, but this and all other particulars can only be learned by exploration.
For further notices, see Krusenstern's Voyage round the World and Re- cueil des Mémoires; Langsdorff's Voyages; Broughton's Voyage; La Pey- rouse; Ritter's Erkhunde; Plath's Geschichte; Penny Cyclopædia, Art. Tarakai; Malte Brun's Geograply; Müller's Memoir on the Amur.
ART. II. Medical Missions. 1. General Report of the Hospital at Kam-li-fau in Canton, from April 1848 to Nov. 1849. By B. HOBSON, M. B. Pp. 57.
2. Report of the Committee of the Chinese Hospital, Shánghái, from January 1st to December 31st, 1849. Pp. 18.
Ar all the missionary hospitals now opened in China, religious services form a regular part of the exercises, not only on the Sabbath but during the week; and no serious difficulty has been experienced in any of them in bringing the patients to conduct themselves orderly during their attendance on these services; much less have any persons declined to receive assistance from the physician because they were required to conform to this regulation of the hospital. It must be a matter of sincere thankfulness to every wellwisher of the Chinese that these hospitals have been made the medium of imparting so much religious truth, as well as relieving so great an amount of human dis- tress, and the details given in the two Reports quoted above show that the medical and religious duties of the hospitals are conducted with great prudence and harmony.
Dr. Hobson commences his Report with a summary of his practice. at Macao and Hongkong during the years 1840-1845, when he had charge of the hospital of the Medical Missionary Society in those places, in which period upwards of fifteen thousand patients passed
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