According to Wu Lien-teh, who worked with Hussey on the Peking Hospital which shared this design feature, the ward was designed thus to “gain maximum of light with a minimum of exposure to northern winds in winter, and also to meet the objections of Chinese patients to rooms facing directly east and west.” * See pages 86-7

*Wu Lien-teh, Plague Fighter; the Autobiography of a Modern Chinese Physician. (Cambridge [Eng.]: W. Heffer, 1959): 463