The Chinese Physician Question (September, 1859)

Source: The Pacific Commercial Advertiser. Honolulu: September 8, 1859. 

HONOLULU, Sept. 6th, 1859.

MR. EDITOR:  -Allow me through the columns of your widely disseminated journal to call the attention of our citizens to a manifest injustice which is perpetuated on our fellow townsmen, the Chinese, in the refusal of the Board of Examiners (or a portion of them) to grant a certificate for practice to a physician of that nation. That it may be just in the majority of instances, I will not deny, and in particular instance to which I wish to draw attention, there may be good and cogent reasons, also, for not granting the certificate, (for “who shall agree, when Doctors disagree,”) which I am not aware of, or have not been made acquainted with. My informants, and they are of the most respectable and extensive dealing Chinese merchants, complain that a physician of their own nation and lineage is refused a certificate or license to practice medicine, and that he will consequently be obliged to leave the country. The doctor in question, (for they say he is legally entitled to his diploma, having received it at Macao,) has had charge at one time of 365 Chinese passengers, from Hongkong to San Francisco; has practice among the Chinese population both in Macao and San Francisco, and has been here since 1852, and was very active and useful during the smallpox epidemic of 1853. They have the most entire confidence in him, both for their own families and the laborers on their plantations, and in the medicines prepared by him, according to the Pharmacopoeia of their country.  The Doctor also has the certificates of the leading firms of the mercantile houses here, to his good character as a man and a citizen. Can it be just, then, do you or does any other man of a nicely balanced sense of right or wrong, think, to keep from such a person a license by means of powers entrusted to a special tribunal composed of three physicians, (and I am told that the majority are for granting it?) Is there is no ulterior pecuniary gain to be derived from this stretch of power? Does it look as if it was forcing in the Chinese to purchase medicines of the Europeans? Has it not the scent of monopoly about it? 

We all know the Chinese of the “coolie” class are a troublesome and  and annoying set of people,  but no members of our community are more respected then the parties who complain of the treatment they are having meted out to them, in their choice of physician, a choice looked upon, and guarded by everyman, as his most special privilege to exercise.

It is the first instance, in many years Quintons I have ever known them seek the columns of the public prints, for an expose of grievances and I trust you will give their humble remonstrance a place in your paper 

TYPHAN