, 1888-05-20
IN A CHINESE HOSPITAL
How Medical Science is Praoticed in the
FIowery Kingdom.

How Medical Science is Praoticed in the
FIowery Kingdom.
/ recently visited the Tung Wa hos
pital at Hong Kong, and saw there many
things of interest, the routine in a Chi
nese hospital being very different from
that of a European one. In the early
days of the colony the Chinese inhabi-
tants used commonly to thrust out their
sick and dying into the street, there to
perish. To remedy 80 scandalous a state
of things h government offered to pro-
vide a hospital for the exclusive use of
the Chinese community, and this offer
they accepted, with the proviso that it
should be unde their own management.
A suitable building was accordingly
erected and handed over to a Chinese
committee in 1867. The medical staff
are all Chinese, and their practice, / was
informed, Is quite uninfluenced by Euro
pean science.
The hospital is a large two story build
ing, with verandas, and it contains large,
airy wards of the usual character. Each
ward, however, is divided by incomplete
wooden partitions into eight cells, in each
of which is accommodation for two pa
tients, who thus enjoy a certain degree
of privacy. The Chinese nave yet to
learn the paramount importance in a
hospital of cleanliness and good ~ventila-
ton. Tho beds consisted of boards rest
ing on t~restles, and covered by a grass
mat, with a bamboo pillow, and by each
was an earthen pipkin containing medi-
cine. Many of the sick were smoking
some tobacco, more Of them opium. We
heard hat in cases which were consid-
cred hopeless patients were allowed to
smoke opium ad lib. If 30, the percent
age of hopeless cases must have been
high, judging from the number of
patients who gazed at us with
l~ackluster eyes and ~listless expression.
The other patients nodded pleasantly
to us, and the present of a cigar or cigar
cite evoked numberless ''Chin-chins."
The wards themselves were fairly clean,
but the patients as a rdle were dirty, and
among the surgical cases we observed
many with undressed, unwashed wounds,
and other evidences of neglect. In the
women's quarter we came upon a group
Of some thirty or forty young girls,
many of them really pretty, whose merry
laughter and the vigor with which they
piled their chop sticks, emptying bowls
of rice, fish, etc, suggested that they
could not be patients. We learned that
they were kidnapped girls, mostly from
the mainland, who had been rescued by
the police and were lodged at the hospital
until claimed by their friends.
The ~dispensary was the place of great
est interest, perhaps. 1t was most neatly
and methodically arranged, and the staff
were lard at work making up prescrip-
tons. Round the walls were numberless
drawers, mostly containing dried plants,
shredded roots, minerals, ETC.; also, YES
sells filed with bones, huge, nauseus
looking boluses, as big as plums, etc.
Among the bone some fragments of a
tigers frame were shown us as q great
treasure-their use being to '.1makee
trong," as the dispenser explained. AS
each prescription was read portions of
various roots, leaves, etc, were weighed
out, wrapped up in brown paper, and
marked with a brush. In an adjoining
room we saw the rest of the process.
Each packet or drugs was placed in an
earthen pipkin, with water, and set to
simmer on n charcoal fire, and the re-
sulting decoction was sent to the patient
in the pipkin in which it had been made.
We then glanced at the smallpox pa
tients, each of whom was isolated in a
large, dark stone cell. Vaccination is
little practiced by the Chinese, and con-
sequently smallpox is very prevalent.
But the committee OF the hospital nave
organized a staff of v~accinators, who are
doing good work..
We found a few lunatics confined in
strongly barred, padded cells, clean but
dark; a few of the patients had chains
on, but the majority were free. Our
final visit was to the out patient depart
ment, where we found a very portly and
CHEEKY native physician, who greeted us
c~ourteously and showed us his imple-
ments, etc, consisting of pitch plasters.
His last patient, a wien faced, voluble
old woman, was just going away, but
she turned back and showed us q sore
leg, with a plaster on 1t. Evidently she
was improving, for, pointing to her doc
tor, she exclaimed: HE number one
pieoee," and then, her English being too
scanty to give expression to her graft
tude, she proceeded to sound his praises
in her own language, somewhat to the
old gentleman's embarrassment, though
he smiled and nodded pleasantly at her.
After glanclng in at a somewhat tawdry
joss house we departed.
On our way back we visited the Alice
Memorial hospital, a new institution
with n European medical staff. We were
told that it was founded by a Chinese
gentleman who had studied medicine in
England, and found on his return that
his countrymen We're too prejudiced to
afford him any scope for his western
science. The wards were clean and well
ordered and full of patients. Already il
has drawn a good many patients away
from the Tung Wa-St. James Gazette.