The Medicine Hall at Eu Tong Sen Street

Posted by noelbynature under Buildings and Monuments, National History
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It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of place; the site (or at least, one of the early sites) of the Thong Chai Medical Institution at the corner of Eu Tong Sen street was the home of a 143-year-old medical establishment that still runs today. Laokokok gives us a short history of the medical institution and the building at Eu Tong Sen Street, which is now a National Monument.

The medical institution was set up as a free clinic for migrant Chinese workers who could not afford to pay for medical services:

After Raffles founded Singapore in the 19th century, it attracted many people from different parts of the world. Many “overseas Chinese” (maybe now we called them “Foreign Talent”) came to Singapore to work or trade. These overseas Chinese migrants also brought along with them their traditional Chinese medical herbs, and also some Chinese physicians began to settle down in Singapore. By 1860, Singapore population grew to about 80,792 and Chinese accounted for about 61.9% (50,010).

Many of the Chinese immigrants here were poor labourers and did not have much money left for seeking medical treatment when they fell sick. In 1867, two charitable Chinese businessmen from Fujian and Guangdong, Ho Tao-Sheng (何道生), Liang Jiong Tang (粱炯堂) set up the oldest Chinese medicine charitable Chinese medical establishment named “同济医社” (“Thong Chai Medical Society”). They employed two Chinese physicians to give free medical treatment to the poor regardless of race, and collect their free medicine from assigned Chinese medical shops (these assigned medical shops will collect payment from Thong Chai Medical Society).

You can read more about Thong Chai in Laokokok’s post here. Medical institutions like these were quite literally lifelines to migrant workers who built Singapore over a hundred years ago; I wonder if there are equivalent services for the migrant workers who are building Singapore today? The ethos of the Thong Chai Medical Society is certainly a worthy one to follow.

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