[
    {
        "id": 207403,
        "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-1975",
        "page_number": 171,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n163\n\nrapidly in the hospital but our nurses carried out full duty by day and by night though many had to draw on their reserves of courage to do so.\n\nIn Bowen Road the women nurses moved at once into the hospital building from their isolated mess and were joined by their colleagues from other hospitals who had suffered the murderous attacks on themselves, their patients and their doctors. It is not surprising that many of them were deeply apprehensive. They never suffered any overt attacks but in their crowded quarters in war-damaged wards they had to guard against many peeping toms among the Japanese guards. On duty they were objects of much curiosity to sentries who, in their rubber-soled boots would suddenly materialise silently out of the darkness of night with their bayonets fixed. Inquisitive Japanese officers would appear in the wards where many patients had limbs immobilised in various forms of apparatus. Those in Thomas splints suspended from Balkan beams were special objects of curiosity but when Japanese tried to touch the carefully balanced suspensions they were speedily moved on by our sisters. In particular the lady who would have hanged the Governor showed, as might be expected, no fear. The courage and fortitude of our nurses at this time are beyond all praise and their example was of the greatest importance in encouraging male staff and patients.\n\nEarly in 1942 the Japanese set about concentrating British and allied wounded, except Indian troops, in Bowen Road. The Japanese had their own political reasons for segregating Indians. By 26 February the only other hospital serving British and allied troops was the small St. Teresa's Hospital in Kowloon which provided a few beds for men from the P.O.W. camps there. Eventually on 11 August 1942 St. Teresa's was closed and its few patients who still needed care were moved to Bowen Road. Thereafter no British or allied wounded remained in any other service or civil hospital or building which had been used as a hospital.\n\nThe Military Hospital, Bowen Road, thus fell into Japanese hands structurally damaged but functionally practically intact, fully equipped with beds, mattresses, blankets, sheets, normal hospital furniture and office equipment and ample surgical equipment, laboratory resources and good stocks of drugs and dressings and medical dietary necessities. Our stocks of ration fuel, coal and expendable materials which we could not replace were soon exhausted.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207413,
        "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-1975",
        "page_number": 181,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n173\n\nstaff, both doctors and R.A.M.C. and R.A.D.C. soldiers who looked after these patients. They did not shrink from an onerous and disagreeable task which I can illustrate by a record I have that during the night duty hours of 23-24 September 1942 patients' bowels opened 232 times in the dysentery division. Two nursing orderlies were on duty in that division.\n\nIt was not easy to construct a diet suitable for patients in the acute stages of dysentery because of shortages and because of our improvised kitchen. Four diets were used, ranging from a fluids only diet built up from rice water, milk when available, tea, marmite, tomato juice, cocoa, soy sauce, tinned milk foods up to a bread (which we still baked at that time), rice vegetable and fish (when available) diet as a precursor to full diet. Some of these patients became ravenously hungry as they improved and devoured rice in such quantity as to cause renewed diarrhoea.\n\nDuring the months from August to December 1942 inclusive 154 patients suffering from dysentery were admitted; some had diphtheria as well and a high proportion showed signs of deficiency disease. Of these, 14 died with dysentery as the primary cause of death.\n\nWhen the patients from St. Teresa's Hospital in Kowloon were transferred to Bowen Road on 11 August 1942 on the closure of that hospital they brought stories of an outbreak of diphtheria in prisoners in Kowloon and the Japanese required me to isolate 10 of the 24 so transferred. None of these patients developed the disease. Of the patients we admitted from North Point Camp with throat infections most were critically ill; the outbreak was explosive, 18 being admitted in August and a further 59 in September, but the Canadians then moved to Kowloon and that was the last of our diphtheria admissions though it was not the last of the outbreak in the camps. Of the diphtheria cases, 19 died up to the end of December 1942, 12 of these deaths occurring in September. In a number of cases there was extensive skin ulceration mainly affecting the scrotum and the perineum while the nose and face were also sometimes affected.\n\nThe greatest anxiety in treating the diphtheria sufferers arose from the shortage of serum. In the hospital we had 31,000 units in our own stock at the beginning of August. In September we received from the Japanese 37,500 units and in October 50,000 units. In September Lt. Alec Mackenzie, a Hong Kong man who was a",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207500,
        "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-1975",
        "page_number": 268,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "260\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nfeet to help aircraft expected to drop supplies the next day. The sign had to be yellow, and the Japanese straw sleeping mats called tatami were used to construct the sign. Some huts in the Indian camp were blown down. We got Tokunaga and Saito to turn over St. Teresa's Hospital to us while we helped also by housing a number of people in our Assembly Hall. Our staff of rice grinders had stopped functioning and we had to use R.A.M.C. orderlies to help. We had been hoping that our sisters would have arrived but a party of them had apparently missed a ferry connection. A nearby typhoon accompanied by heavy rain caused the air drop of supplies to be postponed but the weather moderated and our marooned visitors were able to leave. Two women members of a religious order arrived from St. Teresa's Hospital distressed that a Japanese officer had disturbed them the previous night and I took them to the Indian camp where I arranged the move of patients and staff through Indian Army officers to St. Teresa's Hospital and I set about compiling lists of patients from all centres in order to classify those needing treatment and special transportation when relief arrived. We had a number of Canadian officers to lunch and Major Crawford was a welcome visitor later when he came to see the Canadian patients in hospital. He himself seemed in reasonably good shape by the standards of those days.\n\nIn consultation with Colonel Field certain difficulties over medical arrangements in some camps were remedied. The sisters in St. Teresa's Hospital were keeping three rooms for their own use and the Japanese were moving out. The St. Teresa's staff and patients would be fed from the Indian camp and we were now getting news over the radio which suggested that a relief force might arrive about the end of the month. An emergency operation was performed in our hospital on a patient admitted from camp. The disease was the same as that in the case of the patient whom I reported earlier had been received by us in Bowen Road in 1942 after ten days illness, when he died before surgery could be undertaken. Early surgery would have saved this patient and operation was totally successful in the case of the patient we had just admitted. Staff and patients were again being allowed out locally.\n\nBy 26 August I had occupied the office which Saito had used, and in St. Teresa's Hospital the sisters were now content with the arrangements while they also had access to houses at No. 317 Prince Edward Road, Major Evans was in charge here with Captain",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207508,
        "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-1975",
        "page_number": 276,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "268\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nNone of the foregoing figures can be taken as more than approximately correct. A figure however for which I can vouch with certainty is the total number of wounded treated in Bowen Road. This figure was 646 and was carefully computed by me in the studies I made of our records during the months and years of captivity before the Japanese finally destroyed them. The Bowen Road figures include all who were seriously wounded during hostilities, because all wounded admitted to other hospitals in the Colony and who were unfit for discharge to P.O.W. camps after our surrender were eventually concentrated in Bowen Road by the end of February 1942. The last patients who suffered war injuries to be admitted came from St. Teresa's Hospital in Kowloon when this closed on 11 August 1942. My record of the total Bowen Road casualties amounting to 646 is likely to be less than the actual total number of wounded, because when other hospitals were closing and evacuating their more seriously wounded patients to Bowen Road it is likely that a number of other patients had by then recovered sufficiently to be able to go to P.O.W. camps and it must be remembered that it was the Japanese who decided where these patients must go.\n\nThe official figures suggest that, excluding Indian casualties, some 855 soldiers were seriously wounded during hostilities. In Bowen Road we treated 646 of these. It is evident therefore that about 75% of seriously wounded other than Indians were evacuated by the medical services to hospitals. This represents a major success having regard to the conditions, and the system of evacuation and the skill and determination with which it was carried out must be judged to have worked well. The Field Ambulance commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Ride, which achieved these results was responsible also for recovering Indian casualties, and I have no doubt that these were evacuated with the same degree of success as were the British casualties. Figures however are lacking since the Indian Hospital was overrun during the Japanese advance and records were lost. Readers will recall that early in the hostilities the Chinese ambulance drivers deserted, understandably enough especially to those familiar with the Japanese treatment of captured Chinese opponents. Thereafter ambulance cars were driven by Field Ambulance personnel usually drawn from the medical services. This makes their achievement all the more notable.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    }
]