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5 From College to Faculty BUT AN educational institution conducted on premises not its own, without staff whose primary obligation was towards the aims of that institution, would never prove wholly satisfactory. So it was with the Hong Kong College of Medicine. Various efforts were made in the years following its foundation to provide it with its own premises (though clinical teaching would inevitably have to take place in the Alice Memorial Hospital and the others referred to later). There was the further possibility of conflict between the aims and objectives of the College itself and those of the London Missionary Society itself on whose premises so much instruction had to take place. Paterson has made it quite clear that the London Missionary Society saw the hospitals as part of their evangelizing duty and not only brought Christian instruction to their patients but to the College's students also. But the teaching doctors with the London Missionary Society were in small minority for the services of a wide range of practitioners were called on, some settled and practising in Hong Kong, like G.P. Jordan, and others merely here in the line of duty as army and naval surgeons, as mentioned earlier. Thus far, the path trodden by the College and the manner of the birth and conception of the University (yet to come) bears, as a whole, a striking similarity to a number of new municipal universities in England which hailed back to small medical schools, run largely if not wholly by practitioners putting aside out of a sense of public duty, some of their time to undertake teaching. The ftrst decade of the twentieth century in England saw colleges offering a restricted range of subjects amalgamating with such medical schools to found new universities offering a range of disciplines. The model for a secular university based on sound moral principles was established. The major influences affecting the transition of the College to a Faculty in a university were, however, to be those of the established medical schools of Scotland and London. Those influences were to remain strong for many years to come. The Court of the College of Medicine had already in 1"908 agreed to the principle of the College forming a constituent part of the proposed University. After the engagement was the time for the marriage settlement. It was not unexpected that some hard bargaining had to be done before the 34 Constancy ofPurpose College, a going concern, would consent to the marriage with an as yet unformed University. A draft agreement had been proposed in 1911 which left sufficient time for consensus before the enactment of an ordinance incorporating the new University. In the event, however, the ordinance was only able to empower the University to enter into an agreement with the College and it was not until the following year that the terms were finally settled. That agreement was considerably more complex than the somewhat simple earlier draft. The most important clause of the agreement proposed that the College should stand dissolved on the day 'on which the University is declared to be open' and'its property should be transferred to the University. The lecturers in the College should, subject to certain provisos, be offered posts in the new Faculty and all students recommended by the Court of the College were entitled to' become undergraduates of the University without further examination. Lastly, it was conceded that, when the University was opened, the Faculty of Medicine would be simultaneously inaugurated and no other Faculty would be inaugurated before it. Though it was not possible to implement this provision literally, as the Ordinance declared that there should be Faculties of Medicine and of Engineering, nevertheless the seniority of the Faculty of Medicine was recognized in a number of ways not least of which was by the appointment at the first meeting of the new Senate of Dr G.P. Jordan as the first ProVice -Chancellor. This was partly a recognition of his services to medical education since 1887 but it was also a recognition of the special place of the Faculty of Medicine. (For many years, the University Calendar always put the entry relating to the Faculty of Medicine before all others.) The previous year, the Senate of the College had taken a hard line on representation on the new Senate of the University and sought an assurance that the lecturers teaching medicine (Dr F.T. Keyt), surgery (Dr W.V. M. Koch), midwifery and gynaecology...

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