Sessional_Paper_1895 — Page 628

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Dr. ATKINSON.—I did not take it that way. I do not think he should be allowed a large private shipping practice. Not if you are to do the medical work of the Colony with as few medical officers as possible. Of course, the idea of this scheme is that the different medical officers might be detailed to do quite different work.

THE PRESIDENT. Do you get many Chinese patients in the Civil Hospital who pay no fees?

Dr. ATKINSON.-The Hospital was not intended originally for the Chinese. It was intended for the sailors and officers of merchant ships, Government officials and police cases. To some extent the Chinese have availed themselves of it, but we have had to refuse them treatment and admission during the last few years owing to want of accommodation. Considering the increase in the number of Government servants, of police and of the seamen and officers of merchant vessels visiting this port, due to increased tonnage of shipping in the harbour year by year, the present accommodation does not admit of our receiving into the Hospital any material increase in the number of Chinese patients. You may be interested to here that the number of Chinese admitted into the Hospital annually is about 40 per cent. of the whole admissions. You will see from the annual reports, in 1893 they were 613 out of 1,835. A great many have come to the Hospital voluntarily and we have not been able to admit them. Many of those treated in the Hospital were destitutes. If it is intended that the Government Civil Hospital should provide private accommodation for Chinese, it would seem advisable to erect a hospital for the treatment of Chinese only on European principles, in which case another medical officer would be required. All cases of accident, &c., would still have to be sent to the Government Civil Hospital, as only there would there be an officer continually on duty.

THE PRESIDENT.--You have a good many out-patients already to attend to?

Dr. ATKINSON.—We have had to limit them; to tell them to go to the Alice Memorial Hospital and the Nethersole Hospital, because we had not time to attend them. Fifty or sixty of them would come up daily.

THE PRESIDENT.-The Government wish the Civil Hospital to be availed of by the Chinese ?

Dr. ATKINSON.—I was not aware of this.

THE PRESIDENT.-Is there any hospital to which destitute Chinese can go for medical advice and attendance?

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Dr. ATKINSON. We would never turn any one away who was dangerously ill, whether Chinese or otherwise. It would not be the correct thing medically or on grounds of common humanity. In the Alice and Nethersole Hospitals the in-patients pay for their food.

THE PRESIDENT.-We have to consider the question: "To what extent the Chinese community avail themselves of the benefits of the Civil Hospital, and what steps, if any, can be taken to make that institution more popular with the Chinese ?"

· Dr. ATKINSON. The accommodation available is, as it were, limited. Either we must have more for Chinese and less for Europeans, and in that case we would have to refuse Europeans, or we have simply to turn the Chinese away. If the Government wish more attention paid to the Chinese what ought to be done is to erect another institution.

THE PRESIDENT.--I think this refers more to out-patients.

Dr. ATKINSON.-We have no time to attend to them.

THE PRESIDENT.-You could get as many of them as you liked?

Dr. ATKINSON.-I think we could.