March 28, 1903.]
Addressing His Excellency, Mr. LAU CHU FAK said-Spring now gives life to all things: the trees are putting ont new shoots: a thousand tints of colour are vieing with each other in beauty. Thus not only is the garden adorned with fresh loveliness, but the gardener also is encouraged to renewed effort. To-day, in this seasonable mouth of spring, our new hospital stands completed opposite to the old one. It is as if an old tree had put out a new branch, whose beauty is before our eyes. As | we look at it our hearts are full of joy. Your Excellency, in coming here to-day to open this extension to our hospital, displays such interest in it that all Hongkong may know that we are met together not merely to admire a flower, but in the expectation of Jazuriant fruit which will mature from the blossom. Let us then unite gladly in future efforts. The foundation-stone of this extension was laid on the 25th November, 1899. At that time the Government granted us the site and your Excellency honoured us by laying the foundation stone. Since then three years have elap ed; winds and clouds | have gathered and parted. We could scaroely hope that your Excellency, who had laid the foundation-stone, would also p rform the opening ceremony. But nevertheless sowing and reaping have been done by the same hand. Now, when a mau completes the work which he himself began, bis affection for it is intensified. We venture to hope therefore that your Excellency is animated by the same Sentiment. During the years that your Excellency's star has shone over Hongkong, all humane and charitable works, such as this hospital, have been steadily carried to completion under your Excellency's care. The whole Colony therefore prays for blessings upon your Excellency. It is my duty now to give you some detaile concerning the extension to our hospital. We have to thankfully acknowledge subscriptions from the Chinese in Hongkong and elsewhere to the amount of $66,360.03, and from Europeans to the amount of $20,016. The total sum subscribed was $106,376.03. The cost of building was $62,448 and the cost of the iron work was 81,743.76. The architect's fee amounted to $1,964. The new hospital contains one mater- nity ward, one surgery ward, two first-class wards and four general wards, all of them are bright, well-ventilated, and the convenience of patients has been carefully studied, as you can Bee without words of mine, and it will be possible to do away with the Ko Fong wards in the old hospital. So the Tung Wa Hospital has now a fresh attraction, and being more capacious than previously, it will prove a great and permanent benefit to Chinese in sickness. We trust that future benefactors will make further improvements, so that the high standard of the hospital may be maintained. Then your Excellency's kindness and interest in the hospital will not have been in vain.
In declaring the building open,
His EXCELLENCY said—Mr. Tung, ladies and gentlemen, I have come here with great pleasure to-day, and it is a gratification to me to see the completion, on which I congratulate you, of this valuable addition of the Tang Wa Hospital and having inspected it more than once during the building, I am in a position to congratulate you upon its excellent wards, and especially upon its maternity wards and its operating room. I need hardly, therefore, assure you of the pleasure with which I attend to-day to formally open this extension of the Tung Wa Hospital and to start it upon its benificent work. I have listened to the statement made by the Chairman with great interest, and it is pleasing to find that
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Fong wards. The Committee have long | my intention to recommend to His Majesty' acknowledged and seen with regret that these Government that the vacant space resumed in wards were unsuitable and were badly ventilated. | Taipingshan shall be made a people's garden. and it is pleasant to feel that the poor women The health of the city cannot be placed for one who were accommodated within those wards instant in the scale against a mere question of in the past will
now be more suitably dollars and cen's, and I have no doubt that the accommodated. I see before me many ladies ommunity at large will approve of this decl- and gentlemen who probably have never con- s'ou. We are all aware of the efforts that are sidered the scope of the work that has been now being made to combat the two great done by the Tang Wa Committee and by this diseases from which we have most suffered, and valuable institution. I may fell them that ever. these are malaria and plague; and, throwing year between two and three thousand patients your eye back bebind 1894, I rather think that are treated in this hospital, that here every of the two fearful diseases malaria is the worst. man or woman entering the hospital, may elect | Over all these long years it has claimed whether he or she will be treated according to its yearly tale of victims, and until the discovery the Chinese method of treatment or to the mide by Dr. Ross on the means of propagation European method. The wards are all the by a particular kind of mosquito, we knew same, the beds are side by side, the conditions | nothing about it furt'er than the discovery are identical, and therefore those who enquire of certain medicines which assisted in its are in a position to see which method of
oure. Now that we have discov rol the treatment offers the greatest prospect of source of this disease, it is the earnest recovery. Besides these thousands of pa- desire of the Medical Department and of tients who are accommodated every year within the Sanitary Bard to prevent the disease by z the walls of the hospital, a number reaching. the destruction of mosquitoes. I know that I think, 14o,000—of out-patients are annually ignorant peɔple may think that the mosquit› in treated at the dispensary, which is situated at a small thing, and may laugh at the idea of the opposite side of the street. More thau that, saving human life by the simple destruction of so this bospital not alone will take within its very small a thing as a moquito, but when they walls those who are sick and of whose recovery remember that the simple bite of this small there may be hopes, it will receive the dying] insect, which they can hardly a s' without a and it will bury the dead, and not alone that,| magnifying glass, may cost the life of the father for the poor who are not ill, but who have of a family or carry away the very best-loved no place to shelter, are here taken in by this children, the Chinese people will begin to under- valnable society and accommodated for a time stand the importance of destroying mosquitoes. within the walls of the hospital. You will I ask therefore the Chinese gouisemen and all the therefore understand how large is the measure Chinese present to impress upon their friends and of work don by this instituion, and looking their acquaintances the importance of helping · back upon the accounts of this Colony for the Sanitary Board in its efforts to destroy mos- several years, and remembering the condition of quitoes. There is another matter with refereños the city ten or fifteen years ago and now, to plague that I take this opportunity of impress- question if any factor that has brought to bearing upon the Chinese people. We know that of in the assuagemout of misery in the City of the people who go to hospital a large number die, Victoria has hid a greater share in the good and I cannot help thinking that many of those work than the Tang Wa Hospital. When who have died of plaque have died because the laying the foundation of anothor extension disease has not been taken in time. which is being made by the Chinese to the under the now law if a person who feels himself plague hospital, a short time ago, I spoke ill will only apply in time to a doctor he ein be of the difficulties that probably would be treated in his own house and the Government experienced in carrying out sanitary measures will undertake that he may be treated by s in the city. What the effect of those sanitary Chinese doctor or an European doctor as he measures has bon who can tell? But I then choses, and the Government will undertake to said that all the steps that were being taken find lodgings for the remaining people in the were being taken, so far as we could see, for the house, leaving him to be treated by his own
convinced I am
that many of benefit of the Chinese people, and that we were people.
these cases where
and women men poor all doing what we thought and felt was for the
are left to die and their bodies afterwards best, and I asked the Chinese population to
left in the street-that many of these cases are assist us in carrying out measures that must always be irksome and inconvenient to those allowed to run their fatal course because the upon whose houses those operations took place. people are afraid, first, because they would at I now take this public opportunity of thanking once be taken to the hospital, and, second, the Chinese people for the way in which they | because the hou 'e would be disinfected Disin- have responded to my request. This City of fected of course the house must be. My house Victoria has been disinfected from one end to has been disinfected and I don't like it the other. There has been great inconvenience, | (laughter), but any sensible man must see that but never have we had occasion to use anything | if a mad dog were running about his house he more than a more request. The people have would destroy it and that a mad dog is not one- liste ed to the advice of the influential Chinese; tenth as dangerous as a plague germ once it makes its entrance to your body. What I have said as they have assisted the Government, and in no city in the world have the operations of Sani-regards this reporting of cases of illness in the tary Boards been carried out with less friction very beginning I know is only saying what the and with greater co-operation from the inhabi. Sanitary Board would say themselves and are tants. For all this thank the influential anxious about, and I wish to try the experiment. Chinese who havo assisted the Government, and I want to feel that in some few cases at least I thank the people for the way in which they you will come forward in cases of illness, and have responded to the advice of their leaders. let that illness be t ken in tims and we will se› A new Public Health Bill has just been passed whether a large proportion of lives can be saved that will be far-reaching in its operations, and by treating the people in their own houses and will I hope, make a great change in the com- lodging the other inhabitants of the house We have tried many things fort and in the healthiness of the city in the elsewhere.
me hand fa fature. One of the results of that Bill will be, and you have gone with I hope, to reduce the overcrowding in the band." Now I want you to try this_and_see if succeed. It now may not or city, and possibly to enable the Government it
the remains for me to declare the new wing of the hospital open and I shall presently do so people will have some place possibly for recreation that is not covered with houses. We with the earnest hope that dropping like the are now standing in the district of Taipingshan, gentle dew of heaven the bineficial effects of which in 1 94 was the very worst centre of the this valuable institution may be felt for many a long year by the Chinese "poor among us in visitation of the plague, and at great exĮ ense
Government resumed the
a portion of the assuagement of their misery who when Taipingshan and swept it clear of these afflicted with disease will find extended to them plague-stricken houses. From time to time that brotherly kindness and pity that are the trus bonds of union, and help to make the there has been a question whether the Government shall not dispose of that land whole world kin. (Applause.) and have it again built upon with more bouses. I have come to the conclusion that the greatest improvement in that open space between the new extension is the bright sunlight and the pure air of heaven, and it is
more cost to have so large a proportion of the has been subscribed by Europeans, for it shows that in charitable works as in business the races of the East and the West are working together with that co-operation and good-will that have, within the life of a man,raised this Colony from a fishermen's village, with a few huts, to the position of the second port in the world, in whose harbour the rich argosies of the earth find shelter and security, and within whose borders are found that personal liberty and equality before the law without which there can be no real prosperity or pro- gress. I am glad to find that in the building of this extension, in the first place the, Tung Wa Committee should do away with the Ko
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With a golden key that was handed to him His Excellency then opened the door of the new hospital which he formally declared open. -,
The inscription on the key is: “ Presented by the Committee of the Tung Wa Hospital to
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