ILITARY movements and manœuvres in Hongkew which reduced the number of private patients, and the treatment of an unusually large number of beggars at a large financial loss to the institution and physical suffering to the staff are two important facts mentioned in the annual report of St. Luke's Hospital for Chinese during the year 1936 as presented by Mr. J. M. Wilson, Superintendent.
Reference is also made to medical treatment for young Chinese apprentices and the remark is made: "It is seldom that the owners will pay anything for these little boys as they frankly say they can get plenty more if the little fellows die."
This does not apply to the generality of Chinese employers, many of whom undertake the medical treatment of their injured employees and also gener ously subscribe to the hospital's funds.
The report states:
The year 1936 was a hard year Anacially, as it was a year when we received fewer private room patients than for many years. This was caused largely by the presence of foreign troops in the Hongkew district and the frequent passing of armoured cars, tanks and machine guns mounted on motor cycles. Pa-fients who could pay went elsewhere and several moved out, as they feared that they might be caught in another 1932 experience.
Somehow, the Shanghai police have been very energetic in gathering up the beggars of the city and bringing many of them to St, Luke's. Some of them were the most pitiful masses of filth imaginable. If they had been pulled through a sewer they could not have been dirtier or more ill-smelling. Many were covered with body sores and lice. Great credit it due our nursing staff who have cleaned these beggars up when the odours were enough to sicken them. In spite of precautions several nurses contracted relapsing fever from the body lice and bed bugs removed from these people, These beggars, with other injured and sick people brought in by the police alone, have cost St. Luke's Hospital $52,140.60 in 1936, Of this amount the Municipal Council gave us a grant-in-aid of $28,000 and we were able to collect from a few of the patients or motor car owners $5,042.44, leaving a total loss to the hospital of $19,098.16.
Chinese Apprentices
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.