Francis Dill, surgeon, was listed as a resident of Hong Kong from 1844 to 1846. He succeeded Alexander Anderson as the chief medical officer in the Hong Kong Government in 1844, only the name of the position was different. Anderson's was the Hospital Surgeon to the Colony while Dill's was Colonial Surgeon. Dill died suddenly from liver complication (or malarial fever) in October 1846 and was the first Colonial Surgeon to died in office. He was the President of the China Medico-Chirurgical Society (vice Alfred Green Gayton Tucker, deceased) in 1845.
Dill, as in the case of Anderson, was a local recruit; he received a reduced salary of £600 p.a., which was cut back further to £500 in 1845. The primary responsibility of the Colonial Surgeon was to look after policemen and prisoners in the goal. He was permitted to carry on a private practice on the side.
Two months before his death, Francis Dill proclaimed Hong Kong to be the healthiest British Colony in the Orient.
Selected Bibliography: Biographical Dictionary of Medical Practitioners in Hong Kong: 1841-1941 [online]. Tarrent, William, The Hong Kong Almanack and Directory for the Year 1846, 1848, 1850, Hong Kong: China Mail, resp. 1846, 1848 and 1850.
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