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that point.
But of course if you have
passengers on board a ship mixed up with the cholera patients you cannot tell what means of communication there may have been for the spread of the disease other than ordinary contagion.
Q.-Then with reference to small-pox. What do you say about that? Are people not suffering from small-pox also to be released after twenty-four hours in quarantine?
A. With small-pox you are dealing with a typical contagious disease to unprotected persons. It is totally different to cholera. There is no question that small-pox is contagious and infectious too. It is recognised in the profession that a susceptible person is not safe to go free after exposure under 18 days, but they can always be protected by vaccination, and in Hongkong I believe you are well supplied with vaccine lymph. The question of vaccination would come in largely. If persons on board these quarantined vessels would submit to that I should think they might go free in a very short time.
Q.-But you think there should be some detention ?
A.-Well, not if they would submit to immediate vaccination.
Q.-You suggest vaccinating the passengers at once?
A. If they submitted to that they might be allowed to go free at once, or if they produced some good evidence of recent re-vaccination, then I think also they might be permitted to go free.
Q. What time would you say supposing they would not submit to vaccina- tion ?
A. If they had never been vaccinated then for 18 days after exposure.
Q.-Then with reference to persons on board a ship, arriving from a port where small-pox was rife, or having small-pox on board, if they did not submit to vaccination or prove recent re-vaccination you would segregate them in the same way as cholera cases?
A.-If it is considered necessary from a political point of view. Apart from that however I think it would be a hard measure to segregate them for 18 days.
The Colonial Surgeon.
Q.-Supposing we had small-pox in Hongkong, would you detain passengers on board ship. Suppose we had a fair amount in the hospitals and so on, would you detain them on the ground that they would be liable to contagion if they came ashore?
A. From a medical point of view I would not detain them if there was small- pox prevalent in Hongkong.
The Chairman.
Q.-If a ship comes in with three cases of small-pox among 300 passengers, and the remainder exhibit no indication of the disease I understand you to say that after being detained for 24 hours they should be let free if they submit to vaccina- tion or give good evidence of recent re-vaccination ?
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A. Yes. I would let them go at once. My opinion as regards 24 hours is of course as regards the cases in which persons unprotected have been specially exposed to the contagion.
Q.-Suppose among a large number of these people one person should get ill while under observation and had to be removed; are the rest of the passengers to be kept in quarantine indefinitely.
A.--Not indefinitely, but for 24 hours after protected by vaccination or recent re-vaccination. passengers object to vaccination ?
each fresh case unless clearly
Do you find that the Chinese