Old Hong Kong-4 — Page 293

made an effort to raise money and erected the building next door, now known as the Western Public Dispensary, which they presented to the Chinese Public Dispensaries Committee to be used as a dispensary on the ground floor and as a hospital for plague patients on the upper floor.

When the Indian Plague Commission Report of 1907 came to Hongkong, we knew definitely that bubonic plague was neither infectious nor contagious but could only be introduced to a person when he was bitten by fleas from plague rats. It was apparent, therefore, that a special hospital for the reception of plague patients was unnecessary. I suggested to the Dispensaries Committee, at a meeting about 20 years ago, that the upper floor of the building might be used as some sort of a small hospital for women and children for serious cases. I felt then, as I feel now, that a proper Women and Children Hospital is much needed in the Colony. My suggestion was, however, turned down as being too expensive an undertaking and the work being outside the scope of a dispensary. But about 10 years afterward, the Committee began to feel that, in order to attain the second object of our dispensaries more fully, a maternity hospital was needed. The Hon. Mr. Hallifax, our late Secretary for Chinese Affairs and Chairman of the Chinese Public Dispensaries Committee, was most enthusiastic about the matter; and, through his great interest and influence, the vacant piece of land, where the Tsan Yuk now stands, was secured from the Government, and a hospital erected on it and used as a maternity hospital.

This is a short history of how the Tsan Yuk Hospital came into being. On account of its situation, it fell to my happy lot to look after it as Chairman of the Western Public Dispensary. The medical side of the work was entrusted to the late Dr. (Mrs.) Hickling, of whom Mr. Wood has spoken in his speech, and with whom I had the pleasure of associating on her first arrival in the Colony as Lady Doctor to The Alice Memorial Hospital. Her great services to Tsan Yuk, as Mr. Wood has said, can never be forgotten.

As the Tsan Yuk was intended to be a Maternity Hospital only, the following problems soon found their way and confronted us.

(1) Are we to limit our work to merely taking in maternity cases and stop at that, and go no further, leaving the babies so carefully brought into the world by the hospital to get sick or die through the neglect or ignorance of their mothers?

(2) When we discover, in a maternity case, that the woman was suffering from some disease peculiar to women, which affects her health and childbirth, are we to allow her to go on suffering without trying to cure her?

(3) When, under similar circumstances, we discover that the woman was suffering from V.D., are we to allow her to continue to produce diseased children without trying to effect a cure?

To all these questions, the answer has been an emphatic "No." Hence, the hospital has been doing a great deal of work which may not be deemed to be within the scope of a maternity hospital. By this additional work, the costs of running the hospital amount to, after deducting all fees received from patients, about $1,000 a month. But I make no apology for committing the Committee to such heavy expenses; for the work done was well worthy of the money and conferred a great boon on the poor and contributed to a certain degree to the betterment of the general health condition of the Colony.