Hong Kong: The Kongclusion

This is the last day in HK before we leave for HOSTRALIA or Ow Zow as the Cantonese say. Today we made a pilgrimage to the medical museum aaaaaaand that was it. I bought some shoes but that didn't make for very interesting pictures.

Before we begin, I'd like to apologize on behalf of Chinese people everywhere for the popularity of the following toothpaste.

"Darlie" toothpaste is a well known toothpaste brand sold in China which was originally called "Darkie" toothpaste. The name was changed after the brand was bought by Colgate-Palmolive in 1985, but fans of the oral hygiene agent were reassured by the company that black people toothpaste is still black people toothpaste.

Sorry.

On to the museum!

 We boarded the MTR to Central station and found our way eventually to this location. The museum is halfway up a pretty steep hill - lots of stairs.

Ancient Chinese escalator

There is a dog poop problem. Sign in lower left.

 Tickets were cheap - $10 HK which is probably close to $1.25 Canadian. The museum was made of 3 floors and focused on a few medical disasters in Hong Kong including bubonic plague and SARS. There were also a few pieces of old equipment on loan which I'd never seen before.

Halo systems for scoliosis. If you had a swayback they used to shove pieces of steel into your bones until they could sway you back upright. The upper ring gets fixed via screws into your skull while the lower ring gets fixed into your spine or pelvis, I forget which one. Then you look like a one man cage match.

Vitamin EEEEEEEEEEEEEEther. This is a basket face mask you'd cover in ether soaked gauze when you were going for a appendectomy or when you just can't take going home to the wife and kids.

The gas, she is not for cars.

The ET tube of our ancestors.

Reproduction of a Chinese medicine shop. So a placebo of a placebo YA HEARD ME SO WUT.

Oral airway for Robocop.

Amy ponders the considerations for using a 1970s surgical table.

Back when bandages were washed and reused, this bandage roller had a size adjustable spool allowing bandages sized for your finger and bandages sized for your butt.

Esophageal stents.

Morphine cooking apparatus. Because there is no class in a spoon and a cracked Zippo.

The top one is a cranial perforator for... perforating... craniums... and the lower one is an extraction forceps.

Immunization knife - before there were preloaded syringes, you made a slice in the skin and rubbed in your vaccine. This is the knife you would use. Watch out - butterfly style blade. Docs were gangstas back in the day.

BCG vaccinator - serious needles

Immunization shield - basically a wire basket to protect your immunization site. The vaccine could leak and get into your eyes and then it's not fun and games anymore.

Plumbing from the SARS apartment. Absence of a P trap allowed the virus to come out of someone's crapper drain and backwash up into other people's apartment washrooms which is one way it spread seemingly through floors/walls.

Fixed drain pipes. And to think SARS could have been averted if Mike Holmes had been in Hong Kong.

This is where the rats go to sleep after the lab techs are done playing with them everyday... right?

Museum grounds. Watch out for poop.

So that's it for Hong Kong. Next we'll be posting from our digs in Fremantle. Have to remember to stock up on koala repellent.