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Enclosure 3.
Report of the Government Analyst.
GOVERNMENT CIVIL HOSPITAL,
HONGKONG, 6th April, 1889.
SIR,-I have the honour to submit a statement of the work done in the temporary laboratory of this Hospital during the year 1888.
2. Owing to my being appointed to act as Sanitary Superintendent and Secretary to the Sanitary Board during the absence of Mr. HUGH MCCALLUM, only the most necessary investigations were conducted during the period under review.
MILK.
3. Judging from the results of the regular monthly analyses of the milk supplied to the Hospital when compared with the figures showing the composition of the samples obtained at the contractor's dairy by an Inspector of the Sanitary Department, the Medical Staff have every reason to be satisfied with the excellent quality of the deliveries of this important article of diet.
4. From the average result of the analyses made at regular intervals throughout the year it is evident that the milk supplied to the patients can be favourably compared to that distributed, by the Aylesbury Dairy Farm Company in England.
5. Dr. VIETH in his report on the work done in the Aylesbury Dairy Farm Company's Laboratory during 1884, gives 12.9 as the average percentage of total solids.* The average obtained in this labo- ratory during 1888 was 12.8. These two results, which show the quantity of actual water-free food contained in the milk are practically identical.
6. My attention has been drawn, privately, to certain passages in my report for the year 1887 on the subject of the necessity of checking the quality of the milk supplied to the Medical Department which, at the time, were evidently misunderstood by persons interested in the contracting Company. It should be remembered that the object of the analytical investigation of food is to arrive at facts concerning its composition which are unobtainable in any other way, and that any remarks by those who understand the constitution of such articles should, if received in a proper spirit, be as much a benefit to those responsible for the management of dairies as they are to the public generally. The delivery to the consumer of milk in its original purity depends on a number of details that cannot be too carefully watched.
7. Only one sample of milk was analyzed for the Magistrates during the past year. The specimen was certainly a very suspicious one, but in the absence of authentic information as to its source I was unable to certify that it contained added water.
TOXICOLOGICAL.
8. The following investigations were conducted under this head during 1888.
9. Datura Poisoning.—In July a cheinical examination was ordered by Government of a quantity of fish-stew of which five carpenters were said to have partaken. As these men when under treatment in the Hospital had displayed symptoms that might be referred to a mydriatic poison a direct search was made for the alkaloid atropine, the active principle of several species of Datura and other plants of the Natural Order Solanaces.
10. During the course of the physical examination of the contents of the stew a large number of sections of a flower were noticed which bore a striking resemblance to parts of the Chinese drug Nau Yeung-fa the flowers of Datura alba, Nees.
11. As there is no known chemical reaction by which atropine can be, with certainty, detected it was necessary to rely on a physiological test. An alkaloidal extract of the stew was accordingly pre- pared for ophthalmic use and handed to the Superintendent of the Civil Hospital under whose care the victims had come soon after the matter was reported to the Police.
12. In respect of the physiological action of the extract, Dr. ATKINSON certified as follows:
"From the results of certain experiments carried out at the Civil Hospital this afternoon with a liquid submitted to me by the Government Analyst, I have no doubt that such liquid contained the alkaloid or active principle of one of the mydriatic poisons.'
J. M. ATKINSON, M.B. (Lond.)
27th July, 1888.
(Signed),
13. The discovery of a mydriatic alkaloid was strong evidence of the poisonous nature of the food, and the presence in the stew of parts of a flower closely resembling the Nau Yeung-fa of Chinese Materia Medica warranted the assumption that Datura alba, a plant common enough in waste places on this Island and on the neighbouring mainland, was the agent that had been employed.
* Analyst, vol. X., p. 69.
† China Review, vol. XVI., p. 2. Pharmaceutical Journal, (3), XVIII., p. 319.