Lau King Howe was a Foochow merchant in Sibu who funded a hospital for a town that did not have one. The hospital served the division for decades; when it was eventually replaced, one block was kept and turned into a museum, and it remains the only museum in Malaysia devoted to medical history.
The collection is exactly what it should be — instruments, ward furniture, dispensary fittings, photographs and records — and it is quietly affecting, because it documents ordinary medicine in a river town rather than any grand narrative. It belongs on the same afternoon as the Sibu Heritage Centre for anyone interested in the Foochow settlement story.
