No. 1905
21
HONGKONG.
REPORT OF THE ACTING MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH ON THE EPIDEMIC OF PLAGUE IN THE COLONY OF HONGKONG DURING THE YEAR 1904.
Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Governor.
SANITARY DEPARTMENT,
HONGKONG, February, 1905.
SIR, I have the honour to submit, for the information of the President and Members of the Sanitary Board, the following report on the Epidemic of Plague in the Colony during the year 1904.
The period chiefly dealt with as covering the Epidemic extends from the beginning of the year to the end of July.
This report was begun in August of last year (1901) but owing to pressure of work and my subsequent absence on leave from October to January, the greater part was not undertaken until after my return on January 17th of this year.
Although there were thirty-eight cases of plague between the end of July and the end of the year, the period dealt with includes practically the whole of the time when the disease was epidemic and I did not think it advisable, on taking up the work on my return from leave, to re-write the part dealing with the statistics relative to mortality, age and sex incidence and the dumping of bodies, as this would have entailed considerable delay.
In commenting on the connection between rats and plague I have taken a period extending over twelve months so as to get a curve from the end of the 1903 epidemic to the end of the 1904 epidemic. The rat and human plague curves can therefore be studied during the epidemic and non-epidemic seasons.
During the months January to July inclusive there were 472 known cases of plague.
This number is only 346 per cent. of the total known cases which occurred in the corresponding period of 1903 (1,363 cases) and 41 cases less than occurred during the first seven months of 1902 (513 cases).
With the exception of the years 1895 and 1897 when there were only 44 and 21 cases respectively for the whole years, the figures for 1904 are the lowest the Colony has yet experienced.
The numbers of cases recorded in each month of each year from 1895 to 1904 (to end of July) are as follows :--
YEAR.
MONTH.
1895. 1896.: 1897. 1898. 1899. 1900. 1901. 1902. 1903. | 1904.
January,
49
9
1
8
7
1
4
February,
125
67
2
8
14
1
29
3
March,
168
137
25
5
54
2-
115
4
April,
316
468 101
94
160
27
272 40
May,
344 3
534 421 326 701
157
515 135
June,
13
113
1
92 514 325
551
194
343 194
July,
52
11
August,
25
1
September,
October,
November,. December,
¬2-
9
721N
263 209 109
131 85 96
86
80
27 50 32
16
24
12
:
12
22
2
11
22
2214
2
44 1,204
21
1,320 1,486 1,087 1,651 572 1,415 472