RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988
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Groven Ballen. There was some excitement when Mrs. Lam thought the infant was a boy and announced this to Father. Although having no sons was a disappointment to my parents, this infant daughter was no less precious. With his usual sense of humour, Father named her Dora Me Sun, explaining that Dora sounds like the Chinese words for "too many", that is, “too many" girls. He ordered milk, especially rich for babies, delivered daily for Dora, but she could not tolerate it and became very colicky and fussy. I tried to help by carrying her, swinging her back and forth in my arms or in the hammock, hoping to soothe her with songs like “Rock-a-bye Baby”. Upon the advice of Mrs. Lam, fresh milk was replaced by malted milk, but this probably did not fill Dora's need for adequate nourishment and she continued to cry a great deal. The very strict 4-hour feeding schedule that the doctor recommended added to the problem.

Soon the First World War cast a shadow of uneasiness over our lives and we felt the sadness of mothers who saw their sons drafted and sent to Europe. It came close to home when William Kam, our neighbour, and a few of our schoolmates left. War songs, rallies, victory bonds, first aid packages, etc. in school whipped up our patriotism. I had my first sight of an airplane then. It was a day of great rejoicing when the end of hostilities was announced. But soon the world-wide epidemic of influenza reached our islands and we would hear the sounds of sorrow in our community over the death of loved ones. We were anxious and frightened about an illness that struck so swiftly and with such deadliness. In spite of this, we were a happy family until in April, 1919, we received word that Father had come down with influenza on board ship bound for China. This was our last home in which we had all been so happy together, because Father died on his way back to Honolulu. His death left Mother widowed at age 32 with four young children, and gave me my first real loss, which had on me a sobering and maturing effect. Support and advice from friends helped Mother, sheltered from the world before this, to cope with her new responsibilities.

Ruth's education outside the home began in a small school for Chinese girls run by Mrs. Chang in a building behind the Fort Street Chinese Church. The following year Mother tried to enrol Ruth and me in Central Grammar School, but the principal, Mrs. Carter, reputed to be very selective of minorities and called by the Chinese "pigeon eye" ÉIR
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q
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for being arrogant, did not accept Ruth, probably due to her discrimination against Mrs. Chang's programme. However, she accepted me, perhaps because I was considered uncontaminated and because Father was employed in a bank owned by "white" people. She made a poor choice because Ruth was by far the better student. Ruth then was accepted by Mrs. Creighton of Kauluwela School where she was placed directly in the third grade with Mrs. Bowman. Ruth stood out scholastically and was the pride of her teachers. She continued to do well in McKinley High School and won first prize and a gold medal upon graduation. Granted a Barbour scholarship at the University of Michigan, after a premedical programme at the University of Hawaii, she completed her academic medical studies and received a medical degree in 1929.

At Michigan Ruth met and became engaged to Herbert Kai Gee Wong of Hong Kong before he left to finish his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh. Unfortunately, Ruth sprained an ankle on a tour of a theatre during her last year of school and, even after surgery, was not able to walk normally or to accept an internship in a Philadelphia hospital. On her way back to Honolulu to recuperate, she spent a few days with me in Lincoln and some weeks with Dr. George S. Chan, a distant cousin, in Los Angeles. Being a herbalist, he tried unsuccessfully to heal the ankle with Chinese herbs. Once home she came under the care of Dr. Joseph Lam, family friend and schoolmate of Ruth's at Michigan. An injection of some new medication from Germany, administered by Dr. Mils Larsen, resulted in her death from septicemia on 6 June, 1932. Her three years of illness were a great strain on her and on the family. It was a great tragedy that such a brilliant woman was struck down just at the beginning of a promising career.

―

Helen was a very appealing child bright, sweet and smiling. During the Easter, Children's Day and Christmas services at the Kauluwela Mission, she was always asked to sing or perform. She attended Central Grammar School as I did and was a favourite of her teacher, Miss Padgett, and of the principal, Mrs. Sophie Overend, who had replaced Mrs. Carter. From there Helen went to McKinley High School, where, during her senior year, she was elected ROTC Sponsor for Company L. At the University of Hawaii, from which she graduated in three and a half years with a B.A. degree in Education, she was selected runner-up by movie star John Gilbert in a beauty contest among a group of
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q
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men, steeped in the Classics, is one of my positive experiences in this school.

As I remember it, starting school was not a traumatic experience; I went alone to the Fort Street Chinese Church and, without any ado, sat with other children in the kindergarten that was supported by the Free Kindergarten Association. In those days, there were no automobiles and very few hacks, so it was not unusual for me, at my age, to travel alone to a place where I attended church services with Mother every Sunday. One of our friends, Mrs. Chun Nam, even asked me to take her son to this kindergarten without the necessity of registering him beforehand. My teacher was a Japanese woman dressed in her native garb. This year left few impressions on me.

Accepted into Central Grammar School, I found my first-grade teacher, Miss Armstrong, a warm and conscientious person, who had many charts from which she drilled us in the sounds of the vowels and consonants and in the combination of these into words, using a pointer to guide us. Arithmetic was simple addition and subtraction or the reciting of the multiplication table, which could always be found on the back of our notebooks. The majority of the class were white children, and I did not feel comfortable enough to make friends with them. In the next three grades, I began to socialize with them and was included by them in play, as I was an active girl and swift on my feet when competing. As we advanced in years, the different races tended to chum around with their own ethnic groups. Many of the white children came from the army base and were driven to and from school in army vans. When Mrs. Carter retired, the school became less segregated.

Miss Smith was my second-grade teacher, a young lady of rather generous proportions. She was warm and likeable, yet firm. She taught me to sew carefully and neatly a miniature book, the pages of which served as a place for pins and needles, something I treasured for years. Promptness was imperative. One day, when I arrived late for class, I was so afraid of her that I went home, only to be sent back to school by Mother, another disciplinarian, after she scolded me for dallying with my morning chores. Without asking for any explanation, Miss Smith had me hold out a hand, and then whacked my palm with a ruler; I felt exceedingly embarrassed. It did not lessen my fondness for her, and I
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g
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Ludwig Braun graduated from the University of Graz, Austria and qualified in 1899. He was in Hong Kong in 1903 and 1904. His address was that of the acting Consul for Austria, Mr. Post. Carl Georg Johann Rohrmann held a diploma from the German State Medical Examination qualifying him to practice medicine from 1897. He appears on the Hong Kong Medical Register in 1900.

Erich Hermann Paulan was admitted to the Hong Kong Medical Register in February 1896, by 1898 he had moved to Shanghai. While in Hong Kong he had his office at the Bank Building, No. 16 Queen's Road Central. He died in March 1909 at Shanghai. His obituary published in the Hong Kong Telegraph on 13 March 1909 gives details of his life. He was born at Pasewalk in 1862. At an early age he became an orphan. He was educated at the grammar school at Wolfenbuttel, the Friedrich Wilhelm Institute, and the Berlin Army Medical Institute. After qualifying in 1887 he was a naval doctor. In 1895 and 1896 he was an assistant in the office of Dr. Zedelius in Shanghai, but then came to Hong Kong for a few years. Dr. Zedelius died in January 1899 and Dr. Paulun returned there to take over his practice. He founded at Shanghai a charitable hospital for Chinese which in time became the German Medical School in Burkill Road, Shanghai. His wife had been a Miss Zedelius, probably a daughter of Dr. Zedelius.

The surgery of the medical firm of Muller and Justi was for some years at the same address as had been that of Dr. Paulun. In 1905 they moved to the Hotel Mansions Building, newly built on reclaimed land in Central (DP 1 Aug, 1905). The firm was established by Oskar Muller, a graduate of the University of Munich. He qualified in 1897, and was registered as a medical practitioner in Hong Kong on 2 November 1900. Dr. Carol Justi joined Dr. Muller in 1903. He was a graduate of the University of Marburg and qualified to practice in Germany in 1897. He left Hong Kong in 1913 (HKT 2 May 1913). Karl Hoch joined the practice of Muller and Justi in 1907. He received his medical education at the University of Kiel and qualified in 1904. Theodore van Wesel, a graduate of the University of Freiburg, became a member of the firm in 1912. He had qualified in Germany in 1903.

Friedrich Piers Grone was a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians who qualified in 1901. He first appears on the Hong Kong Medical Register in 1906. He became a member of the medical firm of
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