Chinese Medicine in Hong Kong, 1842–1941

Abstract This article examines the complex interplay between Chinese medical and pharmaceutical practices and the introduction of Western medicine and pharmacy in China, with a particular focus on the British administration’s efforts to marginalizing Chinese medicine in Hong Kong from 1842 to 1941. Soon after the British occupation of Hong Kong in 1841, the Hong Kong government promulgated laws and regulations governing the sale, supply, distribution, and manufacture of opium and potent medicines (aka “poisons”). These laws, based on parliamentary acts passed in Westminster, marginalized Chinese medicine and pharmacy and empowered Western medical doctors, chemists, and druggists as the sole providers of these services. Despite this, Chinese medicine and pharmacy remained the preferred therapeutic system of the local Chinese population. However, minimal resources were allocated to the sector or support for practitioners of Chinese medicine and pharmacy, even though they served most of the population. The British Hong Kong administration seized two key opportunities which shifted the balance in favor of Western medicine and pharmacy. The first was during the 1894 bubonic plague, when the British Hong Kong administration funded a Western medicine clinic at the Tung Wah Hospital in Sheung Wan, with a short-lived effect. The second, with lasting impact, was the mass influx of refugees fleeing Kwangtung (now Guangdong) to Hong Kong in 1938, which led to the three independently managed Tung Wah hospitals (the Hospitals) merging into one Hospital Group at the urging of the British Hong Kong administration, due to funding issues by local philanthropists. Western medicine thus became the mainstream therapeutic system for in-patients at the Hospital Group.