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Dr. MARQUES.--When I think they are not fit to undergo the ordinary punish- ment. I order the diet to-day for to-morrow.
Mr. MCCONACHIE-When you were in the Civil Hospital had you many Chinese patients?
Dr. MARQUES.-Yes. I think they have more now.
Mr. MCCONACHIE.-Have the Chinese any objection to go to the Civil Hospital? Dr. MARQUES.-I believe, as a rule, the Chinese prefer native doctors.
Mr. MCCONACHIE.--Do you know of any means by which the Civil Hospital might be made more popular with the Chinese community? I am speaking of the poorer classes. They go freely to the Nethersole and Alice Memorial Hospitals; why do not they go equally freely to the Civil Hospital?
Dr. MARQUES.-They are more strict in the Civil Hospital. In the Alice Memorial Hospital the Chinese are allowed to take their own food and see their friends daily.
Dr. CANTLIE. Do you think the diet for the Chinese at the Civil Hospital is suffi- cient?
Dr. MARQUES.-Yes, I think it is very good diet at the Civil Hospital and that of the Chinese prisoners in the Gaol fairly good. I do not think it is a question of diet, but a question of discipline. I think that is the reason why the private hospitals are more popular with the Chinese than the Civil Hospital. The Chinese have the impres- sion that the Alice Memorial is half Chinese. On the question of dispensaries I would suggest, as I wrote in my annual report last year, the establishment of a dispensary at Yaumati for the poorer classes; a good many people there have no money to come over to Hongkong. I think this dispensary should be under one of the men trained by the London Mission at the Alice Memorial Hospital. A good many people go to the Alice Memorial Hospital for medicine. I believe it would make Western medicines more popular if dispensaries were opened at Taipingshan and Wanchai and in the different districts of the town under trained native men from the Alice Memorial Hospital,
The President.-Do you think these dispensaries could be made self-supporting? Dr. MARQUES.-No. I think they could be worked by the Government or by private charity.
Mr. MCCONACHIE.-Do you think they would be honestly administered? These men would be men of some character? You would have every confidence in them?
Dr. Marques.-—Yes; they are Dr. CANTLIE's pupils.
Dr. CANTLIE.-I should not like to guarantee them.
Mr. MCCONACHIE.-Is it not a fact, considering the native character, that so soon as they feel they are no longer under restraint or not being looked over personally these men would become demoralised?
Dr. MARQUES.—I would suggest that they should be kept under European super- vision.
Dr. CANTLIE.-The experience in Japan is that after 30 or 35 years, in spite of the fact that Western education is so widespread there, the men go back to the native
customs.
Mr. THURBURN.-Messrs. A. S. WATSON & Co. sell a tremendous amount of medi- cines to Chinese. What do they sell?
Dr. CANTLIE.-Chinese drugs.
Dr. MARQUES.—I am not aware of it, but I believe they sell a lot of patent medicines as in every Dispensary.
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