only a few weeks old being given a mouthful of rice or any other food that the parents may be eating at the time. Thus the children get food which they are quite unable to digest and assimilate giving rise to a train of symptoms of a convulsive nature grouped under the generic term Marasmus.
(c.) Chest affections as Bronchitis, Broncho Pneumonia and Tubercular disease of the lungs as well as the bowels account for 148 post-mortems or 24-4 per cent.
(d.) Diarrhoea and other bowel affections are also prominent with 81 cases or 13.3 per cent. Improper dieting must account for most of these cases.
(e.) Convulsions at the teething period and arising from worms must account for many deaths. As soon as Chinese children can creep, they move about on hands and feet on the floors or streets and pick up earth on their fingers only to be applied to their mouths. This and the imperfectly cooked vegetables are fertile sources of worms. The Chinese recognise this class of convulsive disease under the name of "Kap King" ).
In considering this question of Chinese infantile mortality and in making up statistics, one important factor must be borne in mind, namely, that a large majority, possibly one-third to half of the children dying within one month, have not had their births registered, for as previously stated, Chinese children are not entered in the "family tree" until they are one month old. Similarly Chinese female child- ren are not entered in the ancestral temple. Before a Chinese child is one month old, it is not even considered as such and is not given a name. For these reasons the high death-rate is more apparent than real. The Medical Officer of Health in his report for 1902 gives the infantile death-rate at 796 per 1,000 after allowing for all deaths under one month as unregistered. We have shown above that there is still a very large number of births unregistered in the Colony, therefore the fig- ures given by the Medical Officer of Health must be considered as very much over the mark. Further if these figures are compared with the infantile death-rate in Calcutta given at 748-6 per 1,000 (vide C.S.O. 381) it will be seen that our death-rate is not relatively as bad as is apparent at first sight.
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RECOMMENDATION AS TO PREVENTIVE MEASURES.
(1.) The Committee are unable to recommend many practical and im- mediate measures, inasmuch as from what has been shown through- out this report the first and greatest remedial measure is one which involves the better education of the Chinese, especially the lower classes, to convince them of the necessity of proper sanitary procedure both personal involving cleanliness, as well as in their own households. It has also been shown in this report that the bulk of the deaths occur from diseases which are distinctly traceable to want of cleanliness and ignorance of the fundamental principles involved in the rearing of infants. This state of affairs, therefore, can only be remedied by the better education of the Chinese through gener- ations. We may point out that, to a partial extent, the means of slightly remedying this mortality is available by the fact that the Chinese women may be admitted for their confinement into the Nethersole Hospital, but they are apparently unwilling to avail themselves of this, preferring to be delivered by their own untrained so-called midwives at their own houses. There are four beds in the maternity Hospital attached to the Government Civil Hospital, which are available for free Chinese cases if there are not paying patients in the ward. The addition of the new wing to the Nethersole Hospital will soon give the Chinese additional opportunities to avail themselves of the benefits of a Lying-in Hospital where a Lady Doctor will shortly be in charge. Another remedial measure would be the establishment of a free maternity charity whereby poor people could be attended in their own houses.