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Preface RECENT YEARS in Hong Kong have seen a number of centenary and other histories of Hong Kong institutions and companies. Some have been published privately, some have been published in the normal course and made available to the general public. All have made varying contributions to an understanding of the development of modern Hong Kong and each has its special interest or appeal. Two recent such private publications in the field of medicine are Katherine Mattock's Hong Kong Practice, an account of the evolution of one of Kong Kong's prominent firms of doctors and Dr Edward Paterson's A Hospitalfor Hong Kong, an account in its centenary year of the origins and development of the Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital. Now it is the turn of the University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Medicine. The Faculty traces its historical origins to the formal establishment in 1887 of the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (later renamed the Hong Kong College of Medicine) and the Faculty thus reaches its centenary this year. The Faculty decided to commemorate the event both with an international conference and with a volume concerning the Faculty's hundred-year history. I was asked if I would assist in the compilation of that volume. I have no connection with the world of medicine except insofar as the members of that Faculty are my colleagues in the University of Hong Kong but I am a student of Hong Kong and its history and, with some hesitation, I agreed to do so. The volume which has resulted does not seek to be an exhaustive or 'blow by blow' account or chronicle of either the College of Medicine or of the Faculty itself. It does, however, seek to achieve two differing objectives. One part consists of an extended essay on some of the more important aspects of medical education in Hong Kong, first in the College of Medicine and later the Faculty. The other consists of a number of appendices containing a miscellany of data on both the College and Faculty. I make no claim to originality in any of this and, indeed, it will be evident that I have depended heavily on a number of diverse and already published sources as well as on certain unpublished sources. No apology is made for this as those published sources were generally focussing on different objectives. I have attempted, accordingly, to bring together facts known and unknown to provide a framework in which the evolution of the modem Faculty may be judged. If the reader wishes to pursue a more detailed inquiry, a number of works may be consulted (and the extent to which they have been utilized in the present work will then become apparent). Thus, the most recent work on the history of the University itself, The University of Hong Kong - an Informal History (Hong Kong, Hong Kong xu Constancy ofPurpose University Press, 1980), by Dr Bernard Mellor, fonnerly Registrar of the University, provides the reader with a wealth of detail as well as a discursive consideration of the general history of the University. Dr Mellor's detailed research provides the reader not only with facts not previously published but also a new insight into that which was already known. On the occasion of the University's own 50th anniversary celebrations in 1961, the University published a volume of essays entitled The University ofHong Kong - The First Fifty Years (Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 1961) and a number of the chapters found therein contain very detailed accounts of various aspects of the origins both of the University itself and of the Faculty of Medicine. Thus, 'The Antecedents' (at p.5) by Sir Lindsay Ride, then Vice-Chancellor of the University and formerly Professor of Physiology, contains a detailed account of the events leading up to the establishment of the College of Medicine in 1887 and of the transition to a Faculty. G.B. Endacott's 'The Beginnings'(at p.23) recounts the events leading to the establishment of the University in the years 1910 - 1912 (the year in which the University actually opened) though it should be noted that this ground is also covered in Mellor's book. Ride takes up the story of the Faculty of Medicine as a founding Faculty of the University from its inception to the time of the 50th anniversary in his Chapter entitled simply 'The Faculty of Medicine' (at p.l04) and deals separately with the effect...

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