Medical Defence Plan

Submitted by brian edgar on Fri, 09/20/2024 - 18:24

In a speech in 1940 Dr. Selwyn-Clarke, the Director of Medical Services, gave a few details of the (secret) Medical Defence Plan to be put into operation in the event of war.

He said that in addition to the peacetime provision there were to be eight relief hospitals and the same number of Casualty Clearing Stations. There were also to be First Aid Posts - other sources give the number as 10-12.

I'm trying to establish what actually happened in December 1941 and I would be grateful for any comments on or additions to the lists I have compiled from various sources:

Hi Brian,

Are you making any distinction between civilian and military facilities? I guess these will be civilian if they were described by Dr Selwyn-Clarke?

Would you mind if I set this up as a document with three sub-pages, so:

  • Medical Defence Plan

    • First Aid Posts
    • Casualty Clearing Stations
    • Relief Hospitals

Then can we make changes to the existing page for Relief Hospitals (https://gwulo.com/node/37475) rather than making a new page and having the information split across them?

Regards, David

Hi, David.

My understanding is that Selwyn-Clarke was outlining the measures that would be taken to supplement the work of the Government and Military hospitals if war broke out. I assume that the War Memorial Hospital which was private was to be treated as Government and we know it made preparations to receive Chinese patients which it didn’t usually do.

In the event I think all hospitals took any casualties, civilian or military, that were brought to them although perhaps Bowen Road remained military until it was impossible to operate it fully because of shell damage. 

The problem is the details of the plan were secret so for the most part it’s necessary to look at what actually happened and assume that was what was planned!
 

By all means rearrange the posts in any way that’s convenient.

Thanks to this document unearthed by David, I now think I understand the way medical services were organised at the start of the hostilities:

https://gwulo.com/node/60529

It went something like this:

Most patients already in hospital would be transferred to

a RELIEF HOSPITAL

a person injured in the hostilities would be taken to the nearest FIRST AID POST

and then either discharged or if in need of more serious treatment sent to

a CASUALTY CLEARING STATION

then they would either be discharged or if in need of medical supervision sent to

a RELIEF HOSPITAL

Some comments:

you can see from this schema that Relief Hospitals had a dual function - but I think that once the hostilities started they also gave emergency aid to anyone brought to them from nearby. The same can be said for Casualty Clearing Stations.

Casualty Clearing Stations were the peacetime Government Hospitals turned into something like enlarged Accident and Emergency (British English term) units.

Relief Hospitals were generally specially established facilities, for example ones in the Hong Kong Hotel and the stands at Happy Valley racecourse. However, there were some exceptions to this, which I'll post about separately.