[
    {
        "id": 213035,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1993",
        "page_number": 103,
        "title": "RAS-1993",
        "content_text": "83\n\nestablishment in 1893 of the Nethersole Hospital for women and children, as part of the Alice Hospital, with Mrs. Stevens as Matron. These three steps drew attention to women's health in general, but a maternity service for Chinese women in particular resulted from the support of the Chinese elite and the LMS in the context of public health fears about infant mortality.\n\n4\n\nMrs. Stevens had reported in 1898 that the Alice hospitals did not have enough wards for women. The two beds set aside for maternity cases at the Nethersole Hospital were not only inadequate to meet demand, they were inappropriately placed in the eye ward, where labour was disruptive for general patients, especially when an operation was necessary, and the mothers and other patients were at risk of cross-infection. The number of cases treated had steadily increased to seventeen in 1900. Therefore an Obstetric Bungalow was mooted and a call for public subscription made in 1901. Correspondence notes that funds were only slowly forthcoming, fund-raising limited by the guidelines of the LMS as a mission. For example, the enthusiasm of the wife of the American consul was dampened when the LMS would not agree to fund-raising from a Charity Ball or Theatricals. It took a move from the Chinese establishment and the sanction of government for midwifery training for the plan to materialise.\n\nFor the government, infant mortality was not only a public health risk, a fear heightened at the time of the 1894 plague because of the abandonment of bodies, it also prevented a tidy collecting of demographic statistics. Births and deaths information was of course essential to plan public health services and control contagious and infectious diseases. The problem was that deaths were not recorded and it was only male babies that were registered at the ancestral halls when one month old. In 1896 a Bill recommending the registration of Chinese Midwives' and 'Chinese Doctors' was drafted, but not presented, such regulation being seen as premature.\n\nHowever, it became clear to the government that a Chinese midwifery service which would enable the recording of births was desirable. In 1901, the Medical Officer of Health recommended the payment of a small fee to the Chinese midwife to report the birth, and in 1902 arrangements to train Chinese midwives at the Civil Hospital were made. In 1904, an Inquiry into Chinese Infant Mortality recommended the payment of a fee to the registrant of a birth, and the employment of female visitors to verify",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213042,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1993",
        "page_number": 110,
        "title": "RAS-1993",
        "content_text": "90\n\nto them that I came from the new Hospital and that I should be glad to do anything for them if they would send for me Very few of them grasped it I am afraid Chinese husbands I suppose do not tell their wives much.\n\n35\n\nThe remedy for this situation was precluded by the organisation of medical practice at the time, the second issue. Professional ethics made it impossible for Dr. Sibree to increase her work by taking patients from the registered doctors in private practice in Hong Kong, 36 who in 1900 numbered fifteen. Outpatient work and home visits amongst poor patients were the territory of students of the Hong Kong College of Medicine, for whom the Alice was the training ground. While Dr. Sibree bemoaned the fact that she was becoming 'rusty' for lack of general medical work and that the work with women and children was inadequate, with no way clear to improve the situation, Dr. Gibson was adamant that she be given no share of the general medical work of the Alice or Nethersole Hospitals. Indeed, he dissented from the District Committee's support for her clinic at Sham Shui Po on the grounds of her health, itself an attitude produced by prevailing views about women:\n\nWith reference to the foregoing minute and Resolution Dr. Gibson desires it to be recorded that he takes no responsibility in the event of the work becoming too great for Dr Sibree as it is likely to do if she undertakes much general medical visitation.\n\n19\n\nThe Sham Shui Po clinic apparently did not eventuate. Why was Dr. Alice Sibree not acceptable for general medical in addition to maternity work? Before her arrival, Dr. Gibson had requested that a male medical missionary be sent as locum so that he could take furlough. It is not coincidental that this request was made shortly after the appointment of Dr. Sibree had been advised. Dr. Sibree, although a claimed equal, was not considered, and appears to have been excluded from consideration, as an acceptable replacement for Dr. Gibson. The reason becomes clear when the locum, Dr. Mitchell, explained why Dr. Sibree had been excluded from general medical work. The reason, simply stated, is that a woman doctor was unacceptable to the Chinese, be they patients, doctors or medical students:\n\nNeither of the House Surgeons would be willing to take orders from a lady doctor, nor would it be easy to find any Chinese medical",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213043,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1993",
        "page_number": 111,
        "title": "RAS-1993",
        "content_text": "91\n\nmen who would accept such a position.\n\nIn like manner the students, who have certain duties assigned to them in the clinical ward of the hospitals, would object to taking orders from a lady doctor.\n\nDr. Mitchell continued that Dr. Ho Kai volunteered the information that the Chinese subscribers would not sanction any disturbance of the present superintendency of the wards, making it very clear that he had not consulted Dr. Ho Kai on ‘our little internal difficulty’. General medicine was thereby closed to the lady doctor, but a concession was made: she was allowed two clinic sessions per week for women and children at the Nethersole Hospital. With this, Dr. Mitchell trusted that Mr. Cousins would ‘not be troubled with any further complaints from this quarter’.\n\nAlthough in Britain women doctors had won the battle to train in general medicine, the restriction in role in Hong Kong was defined in terms culturally appropriate to Chinese patients and was exacerbated by the persistent patriarchal attitudes of Dr. Sibree's male colleagues. In 1908, Dr. Gibson suggested that if Dr. Sibree wanted to expand her work, then she could set up a ‘sanitarium for consumptives, convalescent home, home for incurables,’ and noted that he had ‘no desire to give up work which has been my sphere for the past ten years’. This statement powerfully differentiates the female doctor's role as caring for the chronically ill, and the male's as intervention by surgery, consistent with Broom's view of ‘masculine medicine’.\n\nMr. Cousins continued to be troubled by Dr. Sibree's dissatisfaction with her role in Hong Kong, even when Mr. Pearce asserted the support of the District Committee for their lady doctor: ‘Dr. Sibree must at all costs be protected in her rights and privileges as a co-worker with us all’. One suspects that open communication with Dr. Gibson was difficult, leading Dr. Sibree to ask for intercession from London through private correspondence, both personally and by way of her father. Mr. Pearce in October, 1906, commented that\n\nI shall fully and fearlessly act up to my own sense of duty as respects Dr. Gibson. The state of his health and the extraordinary excitement and agitation to which he seemed prone when his will was crossed by colleagues in the mission are the only excuses I",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302",
        "rank": 0
    }
]