Tradition and values live on at RSCM

By Ida Indawati Khow

Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital used to provide free treatment to the poor, and at one stage even paid women to have babies there. Its turbulent history is testament to the struggles the institution endured to uphold the hospital's values on care and treatment. This is the 48th article in a series on old and protected buildings in Jakarta.

JAKARTA (JP): Elderly Jakartans may lament what they call the "good old days", when they could get free medical treatment -- a luxury they cannot even think of now.

In those days, the city they called Batavia boasted the Central Civil Hospital (now known as Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital or RSCM in Central Jakarta) which offered poor Batavians free services.

In fact, that generous hospital, which between 1919 and 1942 was called Centrale Burgerlijke Ziekeninrichting (CBZ), had more to share than that. It even gave 7.5 guilders to women who had their babies there.

All the incentives were deemed necessary because the hospital had a dreadful image: It treated prisoners, prostitutes and people found ill on the streets.

The 7.5-guilder incentive was offered to lure wives to have modern treatment because women usually had their babies at home with the help of traditional midwives.

"It was not surprising that people had a low opinion of the hospital and were horrified at the thought of being treated there," Rukmono and M.P.B. Manus write in Sejarah dan Perjuangan RSCM-FKUI (The History and Struggle of RSCM-FKUI).

Such negative public opinion was understandable because the first hospitals established by VOC Dutch trading company or the Dutch East Indies government in the old walled city of Kota (in West Jakarta), were located near a prison and most of the patients were prisoners, they say.

CBZ was founded especially to serve as an educational hospital for students of Stovia (School tot Opleiding van Inlandsche Artsen), a school for Javanese medical doctors on Jl. Abdul Rahman Saleh in Central Jakarta.

The project began in November 1919. The hospital was established on a plot of land at the intersection of Oranje Boulevard (now Jl. Diponegoro) and Groote Postweg (Jl. Salemba).

On the same plot, a new building for Stovia, which later became the present School of Medicine of the University of Indonesia, was built.

Better equipped

While CBZ was the place where the poor were nursed for free, there were two other major private hospitals for paying patients: the Protestant Queen Emma Hospital (presently PGI Cikini Hospital) and the Roman Catholic St. Carolus Hospital, all located in the same general area.

According to Batavia Als Handels, Industrie and Woonstad (Batavia as a Commercial, Industrial and Residential Center), the three hospitals had the most modern equipment at their disposal, such as Roentgen installations and electric lighting.

During the same period, the city had also special hospitals like the Military Hospital (Gatot Subroto Hospital on Jl. Abdul Rahman Saleh), the Chinese hospital Jang Seng Ie (now Husada Hospital in the Mangga Besar area in West Jakarta), the hospital for children and pregnant women of Boedi Kemoeliaan on Jl. Budi Kemuliaan, Central Jakarta.

CBZ continued to grow. Rooms for specialists, like dermatologists, psychiatrists and dentists, were built all around the complex. More and more people went there for treatment.

As its popularity grew, the hospital hosted the Fourth Eastern Medical Congress in August 1921, and the institution began to receive international recognition.

Unfortunately, in 1922, people could no longer enjoy the free medication at the hospital due to the economic situation.

In the course of time, the hospital had often had its name changed, depending on who ruled the country.

During the Japanese occupation between 1942 and 1945 it was renamed Hospital of Ika Daigaku Byoming medical school. It was then that the top post was held by an Indonesian doctor, Asikin Widjajakusuma, together with a Japanese professor, Tamija.

Rukmono and M.P.B. Manus note that during the Japanese era the hospital was in bad shape because of Japanese neglect. This resulted in a high mortality rate due to a lack of medicines and medical staff.

Historian R.Z. Leirissa, in an article RSCM di Masa Perjuangan Kemerdekaan (1942-1950) (RSCM during the Independence Struggle 1942-1950) tells of how the Japanese doctors also had poor medical knowledge.

"For example, a typhoid patient died after being permitted to eat ice cream by a Japanese doctor," he said.

During the struggle for independence between 1945 and 1949, the hospital, which then was renamed Rumah Sakit Oemoem Poesat Negeri (RSON, the State General Hospital) played a major role. Doctors and other medical personnel went to the battlefield.

Leirissa noted that the doctors and all other staff went to the Karawang-Bekasi war front in West Java to treat war victims.

"The hospital also provided a 'heroes ward' for the Karawang- Bekasi victims. The growing demand for medical treatment resulted in a lack of medical equipment and sometimes banana bark was used for bandages," he said.

The Dutch tried in vain to take over the hospital when they came here again after Indonesia proclaimed independence on Aug. 17, 1945. In 1948, it became the Indonesian "fortress" in the city, which had been conquered by the Dutch, Leirissa says.

The Dutch took it by force in August 1949 but some 1,000 Indonesians doctors and staff who refused to cooperate with the colonial government left the hospital.

"Meanwhile, patients left by becak (pedicabs) and were treated at doctors' houses," Leirissa says, referring to the doctors housing complex on Jl. Kimia in Central Jakarta.

Thanks to the 1949 Round Table Conference in The Hague, in which the Dutch agreed to relinquish all state institutions to the Indonesian government, the hospital came under Indonesian ownership again.

It was not until Aug. 17, 1964 that it was renamed Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital, after the nationalist medical doctor, Tjipto Mangunkusumo, who dedicated his life to the poor.