On Tuesday afternoon an interesting inaugural ceremony took place at a new building which has just been completed at the corner of Seward and Nanzing Roads. The building in question is designed for the reception of the female patients hitherto treated at St. Luke's Hospital, the increas. ing. number of male patients at which institution has rendered the extetision of accommodation. The new branch is to be under the charge of a lady physician, Dr. Marie Haslep, who has had tome two years' experience in China but ha' not long been resident in Shanghai. The bauding, which has been constructed from plans by Dr. Boone, is very plait and unpretending, but is solidly built and fitted and well designed for the purpose in view. The entire cost, including all fittings, estimated at something over Tls. 7,000. Gri the ground fi.or are the waiting, consulting, and dispensing rooms. Upstairs are one ware and a few small private rooms for the benefit of those patients who can afford to pay for them, Twelve or fifteen in-patients can be accommodated here, but the bulk of the work will be among the out-patients, of whom there will probably be 70 or 80.' A separate structure is provided for the treatment of pauper sufferers, with whom it is found that the other classes of Chinese decline to mix.
At the opening ceremony, at which a number of foreign ladies and gentlemen were present in addition to Chinese, Bishop Boone, who presided, gave some information as to the financial part of the undertaking, He said that in 1883 there was iv one of the back streets of the English settlement a building known as the Gutzlaff Hospital. Tt_was thought by those in charge of it that it would be well to lessen the number of Hospitals—thero were then some that were small and struggling—and the trustees made an offer to amalgamate it with the new St, Luke's Hospital, offer was accepted and the goods of th Gutzlaff Hospital were sold, realising a sum of about Tls. 3,000. It was with the proceeds of this' money and the increase of it that the ground had been purchased and the new building erected; and there was a balance of Tls. 300 left, Bishop Boone added that the work would be taken up by a lady physician and trained assistant who had already had experience of work amon; the Chinese. The work of the branch work go on with every prospect of success from the beginning.
Mr. J. A. Leoxanv (United States, Consul-General) said—It must be gratifying to everyone present to hear what we have just heard from Bishop Boone—that this inistitution, at the opening of which we have the pleasure of being present, is so well established financially that there may be no doubt as to its future. Such institutions as this are among the most beneficent evidences of the great improvement of our modern eivili Hospitals are not only great public institutions, but I think it is safe to say, that, looking at them from a professional and technical point of view, they're toa great extent the educatorsof tie medical profession. That wonderful devel-lopment in the science of medicine which hi made it in some respects the most intellect tual of all professions—a profession that day draws upon every source of knowledge and applies to the benefit of humanity all the most marvellous and almost incompresensible discoveries of science, many of which have been made within our own lifetime—has largely resulted from the establishment of hospitals, and the knowledge and experience gained in such institutions. We have reason to look kindly upon hospitals, from their influence as jucators upon the medical profession. They are to a great extent the most important and essential schools of medicine. They are more than that; they are great public institutions in which our civilisation shows to the fullest extent that all the imevement we have made in the art of living has been for the benefit of humanity. They are institutions which show how much better we live than our fathers ived, and how much better our children will live than we live. We are sometimes tempted to think that there was a time Detter than this: that those almost forgotten beings whose swords are rust, Whose bones are dust, and whose souls are with the saints, we trust" lived in a better era than we. But when we consider that such institutions as this hospital are spread all over the civilised world, and how prior,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.