Medical Services Development Timeline

Updated on November 13, 2009

The 19th Century

1841
► British troops occupy Hong Kong in January and establish the first ever hospital in the colony – the Naval and Military Hospital - to take care of their own personnel, the hospital is destroyed in July by a typhoon.

1843
► Dr. Alex Anderson is appointed Hong Kong's first Colonial Surgeon.
► HMS Minden arrives in Hong Kong, becomes the first hospital ship in the colony.
► The Medical Missionary Society Hospital (傳道會醫院) opens in Morrison Hill, managed by Rev./Dr. Benjamin Hobson, becomes the first hospital opens to the populace.
► The Seamen's Hospital opens in Wanchai to take care of non-Chinese seamen, headed by Dr. Peter Green.

1845
► The China Medico-Chirurgical Society is founded in Hong Kong, Dr. Alfred Tucker - surgeon of HMS Minden – becomes the Society's inaugural President.

1848
► Dr. William Aurelius Harland of the Seamen's Hospital performs the first surgical operation in Hong Kong with the use of chloroform.

1849
► The Government Civil Hospital (政府公立醫院, also known as 國家醫院) opens as Hong Kong's first government hospital.

1858
► The Lock Hospital (性病醫院) opens as Hong Kong's first venereal diseases hospital.

1871
► The Smallpox Hospital opens on Stonecutters Island, becomes Hong Kong's first epidemical hospital.

1872
► The Tung Wah Hospital (東華醫院) opens, becomes Hong Kong's first Chinese medicine hospital servicing the Chinese populace.

Philip B. C. Ayres

1873
► The Samllpox Hospital closes, and the patients are thenceforth accommodated at the Government Civil Hospital.
► Dr. Philip Burnard Chenery Ayres is appointed Colonial Surgeon and Inspector of Hospitals, a post he holds for twenty-four years and becomes the longest serving Colonial Surgeon ever.

1875
► The Lunatic Asylum opens as Hong Kong's first institution for psychiatric patients, admitting non-Chinese patients, whom were sent to gaol before the opening of the asylum. Chinese patients are sent to the Tung Wah Hospital.

1885
► The European Lunatic Asylum opens to replace the ten-years-old Lunatic Asylum, the new facility is purposely designed and built.

James Cantlie1887

► Dr. James Cantlie (康得黎), Dr. Patrick Manson (梅森) and Prof. G. P. Jordan (佐頓), together with Aberdeen graduate Dr. Ho Kai (何啟), establish the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (香港華人西醫書院), the first college of Western medicine in the city.
► Establised and managed by the London Missionary Society, the Alice Memorial Hospital (雅麗氏紀念醫院) opens in 1887 and provides free medical services to the Chinese populace. The consturction of the hospital is funded largely by Ho Kai in memory of his wife, Alice (Walkden)(1852, London-1884, Hong Kong), who died of typhoid fever three year after she arrived in Hong Kong.

1889
► The Government Civil Hospital hires a nursing staff of trained nurses from the London Hospital, the matron is Clara Eastmond.

1890
► The British Medical Association (Hong Kong Branch) is founded on November 15, 1890. Founding members include Dr. James Cantlie, Dr. Patrick Manson and Prof. G. P. Jordan.

1891
► The Chinese Lunatic Asylum opens, henceforth the Tung Wah Hospital stops admitting mental patients.

1893
The Alice Memorial Hospital becmes the first hospital in Hong Kong to provide nurse training.

1894
► A bubonic plague epidemic that started in Yunnan in the 1860s was spreading throughout southern China in the 1890s and, Hong Kong is hit in May, 1894 and on May 10, Hong Kong is declared an infected port. From May through December the same year, 2,679 cases are recorded with 2,552 deaths. The epidemic will continue until 1923 and claims 20,489 lives in all.

Shibasaburo Kitasato (北里 柴三郎)

Alexandre Yersin

► Swiss-born French physician and bacteriologist - Alexandre Yersin, in concert with eminent Japanese physician and bacteriologist - Shibasaburo Kitasato (北里 柴三郎) identify the bacterial cause of bubonic plague.
1897

► A maternity block was added as an annexe to the Government Civil Hospital.