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No. 16.
HONGKONG.
CORRESPONDENCE RESPECTING QUARANTINE REGULATIONS.
Presented to the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Officer Administering the Government.
(1.)
Chairman, Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce, to Acting Colonial Secretary
SIR,
HONGKONG GENERAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, HONGKONG, 25th January, 1886.
Adverting to your letter of the 28th ultimo informing this Chamber that Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies was not prepared to overrule the decision of the Colonial Government to retain, for the present, the modified system of quarantine embodied in the existing regulations, I am desired by the Committee to urge upon His Excellency the Administrator the reconsideration of this important question by the Colonial Government.
Whatever opinions may have been held in former times when less was known of the nature and causes of the disease than now, as to the supposed power of quarantine to act as an effectual barrier against the intrusion of cholera, increased. experience and deeper research into the origin, spread, and propagation of the disease has brought about a consensus of opinion amongst medical and scientific men of the highest eminence, who have made it the subject of their most careful study, that the system of quarantine is distinctly dangerous and injurious.
This is clearly pointed out by the Committee recently convened by the Secre- tary of State for India for the purpose of considering a report by Drs. E. KLEIN. and HENDAGE GIBRES entitled "An Inquiry into the Etiology of Asiatic Cholera," which concludes its report with the following observations :—
"Although the precise cause of cholera has not been ascertained, sufficient is known of the general character of the disease to serve as a trustworthy basis for practical action; and the Committee feel that they ought not to separate without expressing their conviction that sanitary measures in their true sense and sanitary measures alone, are the only trustworthy means to prevent outbreaks of the disease and to restrain its spread and mitigate its severity when it is prevalent."
"Experience in Europe and in the East has shown that sanitary cordons and quarantine restrictions (under whatsoever form) are not only useless as means for arresting the progress of cholera but positively injurious; and this not merely because of the many unavoidable hardships which their enforcement involves, but also because they tend to create alarm during periods of epidemics of the disease, and to divert public attention at other times from the necessity which constantly exists for the prosecution of sanitary matters of assured value-measures which, moreover, tend to mitigate the incidence of all forms of disease.'
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After such an expression of authoritative opinion, it is difficult to conceive what argument can be adduced in favour of the retention of the system of quarantine.
The objections of the Colonial Government to the abolition of the present system, as the Committee understand them from previous correspondence, and from the letter of the Secretary of State, arise from the alleged insanitary condition of Hongkong and other local circumstances, which, the Committee observe, are not particularised, and, also, from the difficulty that would be experienced by the Executive in exercising an effective inspection of vessels and tenements in the Colony.
The Honourable F. STEWART, LL.D.,
Acting Colonial Secretary.