OBSERVATIONS IN THE ORIENT. BY E. P. THWING, M. D. To the Editors of the BROOKLYN MEDICAL JOURNAL : Leaving Brooklyn, September 19th, five days' travel brought me to the Golden Gate; about eighteen more to Yokohama. Fifteen days' travel through Central Japan furnished exhilarating experiences. Five days took me to Hong Kong, and after a residence of two months in Canton Hospital, about thirteen days to Bombay completed the itinerary of 13,000 miles thus far. A zigzag journey through India, from Delhi, Agra, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Benares and Calcutta to Madras and Ceylon, back to my present hospital home will add 6,000 miles more to the above record. Swift steam and swifter lightnings dwindle distance and abolish time. The globe-trotter may reduce Jules Verne's once fabulous figures to 75 or fewer without buying an elephant or burning a steamer's woodwork to make good speed. Comfort, too, is had. Let me, however, advise for the editors have asked of me "a chatty letter"-that one always travel east. Fourteen trips across the Atlantic and my experience of the "mighty, mad and changeable Pacific," when they are crossed the wrong way, convince me that it is wiser to girdle the globe, meeting the sun rather than following it. You can reach London in seven days from New York, and in thirty days more, via Brindisi and Columbo, you reach Hong Kong. Could you make close connection with a good steamer, you would have but eighteen days before you will meet the vestibule train that goes from San Francisco to New York in four days and twenty one hours. The "China" recently came from London to Hong Kong in thirty days, and went from Japan to California in twelve and a half days. Head-winds always are expected going westward round the globe. A word about expenses. From San Francisco to Hong Kong the fare is about $200 gold; thence to Bombay, $200. Mexican, i. e., $150 gold. From Bombay to London, from £52 sterling, upwards, according to accommodations. Excellent rooms, table-fare and society are had on these Oriental steamers in the second saloon with the privileges of the forward spar deck and the port side of the hurricane or promenade deck. You have a Lascar boy to fan you with the punka as you eat your ice cream, and a European servant to bring you your cup of coffee before you dress in the morning. You have the windscoop to cool your room at night, and ports that are not port "holes," but windows, four feet in diameter, kept open too, from one week's end to another. A new piano is not to be forgotten in my enumeration of luxuries enjoyed as a passenger in the second saloon of the "Oriental" of the Peninsula and Oriental S. S. Co. She is a new seventeen-knot boat, though not pushed at that rate, and the broadest and roomiest ever met with since my foreign voyages began in 1855 with Cunard side-wheelers. Well, what of the East? I answer: "The morning light is breaking." An American physician who, under imperial supervision in Japan, has trained and sent out into successful medical practice thirty young men of that country, told me in Yokohama that in no feature had the intellectual awakening of that empire been more marked than in the line of Western medical science. My table mate is the wife of one of the professors of the new medical college which the King of Siam is about to open at Bangkok. One of the princes, coadjutor of the king, has had a European education. Seven students will shortly start for America to take a medical course. They will spend eight years. China is not to be left behind in this renaissance. If the King of Siam can afford to give his court physician, a Scotchman, $8,000 a year and the American and European professors in the college under his patronage a remuneration similarly generous, in addition to what their other practice yields, the neighboring Oriental courts feel the same impulse. It matters not whether it is a vis a tergo or a vis a fronte, the impulse towards a broader national life is unquestionable. Just before I reached China the emperor surprised his people by not only sanctioning, but enjoining, a project, which has hitherto been strenuously opposed, the immediate construction of a railway line across the empire. The phrasing of his decree is emphatic. "The sovereign thinks that railways are essential to make a country prosperous." It would be easy to fill pages with personal observations. in the East which illustrate the advance of educational ideas, particularly in medical science. One day a Mandarin millionaire, holding a high post under the emperor, came to us at Canton Hospital asking the professional services of a lady physician for his mother, hundreds of miles away. Dr. Fulton went and was treated with special consideration. Contrary to Chinese etiquette, she was entertained at the same table with the gentlemen of the household and in the European style of table service. She and the wife of another medical missionary held services in their spacious apartments, attended not only by native Christians, but by many who heard for the first time "the doctrine" of one God. The illustrious patient was cured and many others of the family and neighborhood successfully treated. In addition to her fees, she was decorated with two gold medals, bearing, in Chinese characters, laudatory testi mony to her ability. The Hong Kong papers properly remark that this is a graceful acknowledgment of the superiority of Western science on the part of those high in social and political influence. Other gifts followed after her return, and a new interest is awakened in this family clan of 400 in regard to what American ideas on other subjects represent. While visiting a native hospital at Fatshan I learned from an English medical man that he had been solicited to treat the manager of this very hospital. Confessing the uselessness of native medicationsfor they have no surgery-he paid Dr. W. a good fee for radical treatment of hæmorrhoids. Dr. J. G. Kerr, of Canton Hospital, has been thirty-five years an able physician and surgeon, and the value of the work in its humane and beneficent effect is well expressed in the remark of a British consul during the war. "This hospital is a safer place than a gunboat." The inherent prejudice of the Chinese to any dismemberment of the bodythis being related to a supposed future disfiguration-the absence of railways and, to a great extent, machinery in China, prevent much of the surgery common with us at home. Operations for stone are common. I have aided Dr. Kerr in two cases of ovariotomy. The plan we are maturing for the Insane Hospital receives approval of all intelligent natives and foreign residents. Subscriptions of money have begun. Who from Brooklyn or New York will offer himself as a personal contribution? A residence in the East is not without its attractions. The last three or four days have been spent in Ceylon, which in medical culture and enterprise is said to be ahead of India. Dr. Green from the States was a pioneer. The Ceylon Medical College has trained 250 or more students, some of whom went abroad to take degrees, 75 qualified here and others entered the 120 hospitals and dispensaries scattered over the island, where lepers, lunatics, contagious diseases, lying-in-women-170,000 applications annually-are treated. I visited, day before yesterday, 367 men and women in various stages of mental disease in the lunatic asylum at Columbo, conducted by Dr. Hallock, who is a Tamil, a graduate of Ceylon and of Edinburgh, and with his colleague, Dr. Spence, a European, is a member of the British Medical Association. He speaks English and puts it into even more piquant brevity than is common with us, as where, pointing out patients, he said: "This is a case of G. P." But it is time to say "claudite rivos." The mercury is persistently in the eighties, albeit February will be here in a few hours. How enjoyable, for variety, a blizzard would be! MEDICAL CHARITIES. BROOKLYN, N. Y., May 15, 1890. To the Editors of the BROOKLYN MEDICAL JOURNAL. GENTLEMEN:-It was my privilege some time since, in response to a courteously extended invitation, to address a public meeting held for the purpose of promoting a new medical charity in a rapidly growing part of our city. In that address I quoted certain statistics more or less familiar to the medical profession, but not known to the laity, and endeavored to demonstrate Brooklyn's need of such institutions. I have since received numerous communications, many of them from men whose judgment I hold in high regard, criticising my action in the matter. Now, it is to be borne in mind that the address referred to was delivered to a miscellaneous audience, and it will certainly be proper to institute certain inquiries here which would have been manifestly out of place there. First. What is a charitable medical institution? It would perhaps be approximately correct to answer: A properly-equipped institution where relief is given or attempted to be given to men and women whose financial condition is such as to render them unable to secure the private care and attendance of a skilled physician. Surely, an improperly and insufficiently-equipped institution can hardly be called a charity. An eye clinic without proper instruments for testing or operating on diseased eyes, or an orthopaedic clinic without proper appliances for treating diseased joints, would hardly be charities. A true charity would demand the closing of such institutions in the interest of a suffering and credulous humanity. If it could be shown that a city was possessed of a large number of alleged medical charities destitute of proper equipment to effect the work which they claim to do, would this prove that in such city there was no need of further well-equipped medical charities? Let reputable and broad-minded physicians, bearing this question in mind, carefully examine the numerous hospitals and dispensaries of Brooklyn, and they will find food for abundant thought. Second. Is an alleged medical charity operated solely for selfish ends entitled to be called a charity at all? What is the animating spirit which produced and which maintains it? Who controls its affairs, one or two self-seeking M.D.'s, or a Board of Managers, composed of live and charitably-disposed men? What do the names of the "Board" as they are printed in the "Annual Report" stand for? Have they merely been loaned to the institution, at the earnest solicitation of the aforesaid M. D.'s and upon their solemn promise that no work shall be required, or do they represent men of "grit" and "nerve" who do manage and control the work in question? Who is the chief beneficiary? Is it the public or some doctor who uses the institution as a side-door to his private practice? Is it charity to beguile the public into the support of an institution the first purpose of which is to prop up some weak physician who dare not take his stand upon his own merits, before the public and among his brethren? These are only questions. I might mention facts; but the physician who looks about him will soon discover the facts, and I shall be spared a painful recital. Indeed, every now and then we are treated to an exposé of some fraudulent or semi-fraudulent institution of the character hinted at above; then there is an outburst of indignation; the men whose names have been loaned or stolen enter their vigorous protest; and physicians who care for the honor of our profession are subjected to intense annoyance. And what is If the friends who have subjected my action in the matter already referred to to criticism will carefully analyze their feelings, they will find that their objection is not to honest and honorably-conducted medical charities, but to the numerous counterfeits which unfortunately glut the market. However much the honorable physician may decry the hypocritical and unworthy wearing of "sweet charity's' mantle, he will not antagonize the institution which, with proper appliances, is doing an honest and unselfish charitable work. the best remedy for the evil of pseudo-medical charities? a creation of real charities, which, under the law of "the survival of the fittest," shall crowd their unworthy competitors out of existence or compel them to better their ways, And in this work, which is eminently reformatory in its nature, who should be more profoundly interested than the medical profession itself? Let us think carefully before we pledge ourselves unreservedly to the doctrine, that there are too many medical charities in the City of Brooklyn. Respectfully yours, REUBEN JEFFERY. 87 South Ninth Street. SICK BENEFIT SOICETIES AND THE CENSUS. The business of gathering the data in reference to sick-benefit, funeral aid, death-benefit and other kindred societies, has been placed in charge of Mr. Charles A. Jenney, special agent of the insurance division, 58 William Street, New York City, and all associations throughout the United States, whether incorporated or private, should assist by sending him the address of their principal officers. |