Page 29 - HKU Surgery 110 Anniversary E-Book

Chapter I: The Cradle of Our Origins

Blessing in Disguise

Chinese medicine. The hope was that expansion of the colony into the
graduates would lead the way, after New Territories with the signing of
being trained by volunteer surgeons a 99-year lease with China in 1898,
and doctors who had been educated which significantly increased the
overseas and established their own need for trained medical personnel.
successful private practices. While graduates were permitted to
sign death certificates, it was not
Manson, serving from 1887-89, until 1914 that they were allowed
secured recognition for the College’s to be fully registered as medical
aims from a high place. He was both practitioners in Hong Kong.
a surgeon and an expert in tropical
medicine, and in 1886
he treated the Chinese
st atesman, Viceroy L i
Hongzhang, for an abscess
of the tongue that had been
misdiagnosed as cancer. A
grateful Li, in turn, agreed
to be Patron of the new
College in 1888.

U nf o r t un a t e l y, hig h
level support was not
for t hcoming f rom t he
colonial government, which
The Alice Memorial Hospital at the corner of Aberdeen Street and Hollywood Road, home to the College of Medicine for Chinese. offered little in the way of
funding support, land or
The College opened its modest doors R Belilios, who had a surgical ward recognition of the College’s
in a city with a transient population, named after him. Ho soon partnered diploma. Holders of the
where infectious diseases were with Manson and Cantlie to establish Licentiate in Medicine
prevalent and sanitary conditions the College, with Alice Memorial as and Surgery of the College
appalling. A major driver in its the base, at the junction of Aberdeen of Medicine for Chinese,
founding was Sir Ho Kai, who was Street and Hollywood Road. Hong Kong, would not
trained as a doctor and a barrister be allowed to register for
in the UK. Early in 1887, he helped From the start, the College intended practice until 1908 – two
fund the construction of the Alice to bring Western medicine to the decades after the College
Memorial Hospital, named after his local Chinese population, which at was launched – despite
late wife, alongside philanthropist, the time was resistant to the idea plague outbreaks and the
banker and opium trader, Emmanuel of surgery and preferred traditional
The surgical ward was located on the second floor of the Alice
Memorial Hospital.

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