185 (214)
2216.8
2. Ten years have intervened. The Ordinance has had full and fair trial, its pro- visions have been enforced at large sacrifice to the Colony's material welfare notwithstand- ing which plague has not disappeared and I doubt whether it has even diminished to any large extent.
3. Under these circumstances the time has surely arrived for a revision of our methods, unless evidence be forthcoming that the measures legalised by the Public Health Ordinance have resulted in more good, than is apparent on the surface.
4. The abolition of cubicles renders it impossible for a family of small means to live. in the Colony or it drives them to the use of curtains as partitions, which by reason of their filth are a worse evil than the old wooden ones.
I suggest a modified form of cubicle be allowed, made of painted woodwork and glass (or iron and glass) raised from the floor and of such height as not to exclude light and air.
5. The so called limewashing catails expenditure by tenants (for tenants pay in the long run) with no corresponding good, as the mixture slopped on to the walls is valueless except to accentuate the surrounding dirt. It is I believe admitted to contain no disinfect- ing properties so that this expenditure, generally recognised as an ignorant mistake, is continued in violation of common sense.
Compulsory limewashing should be abolished, and in its place I suggest that more effort be directed towards the destruction of rats, and ordinary cleanliness. The most effective method of destroying rats is to starve them in their runs, involving the removal of ceilings and the effective closing of runs with cement mortar mixed with broken glass. There should be no openings in walls on ground floors for rats to enter from streets and lanes. Drains from ground floors should not be led through walls as now, but through the door cill so that when the door is closed the rat is excluded.
Ordinary cleansing I believe to be the most effective preventive of Plague. Short simple instructions should be posted in Chinese houses requiring rat runs to be closed and rooms cleansed, every house inspected say once a month at a fixed hour on a day, the con- tents of the room placed in the centre, obstructions to light and air removed. The Inspector should examine punctually at the time appointed and grant certificate that the room is clean. Following the Inspector should come the cleansing gangs to cleanse those floors which the Inspector has not passed. I venture to say that if this procedure were adopted, within a few months there would be few floors left for the cleansing gangs to deal with.
Tanks as at present (but more of them) should perambulate the streets daily contain- ing plain boiling water for killing vermin by immersion of mats and trestles.
6.--Regarding the concreting of floors and other structural repairs I think that after a house has been put in order a certificate should be given absolving it from further Sanitary requirements for a period.
7.- Where no cubicles exist a larger number of persons might be allowed to occupy a room than is permitted by present regulations. The allowance of 50 feet of floor area and 550 cubic feet of air is excessive when it is considered that for 8 months of the year the windows and doors remain open day and night.
8.-Drains as far as possible should be abolished and surface channels substituted.
9. Gratings to drain pipes should not be insisted upon as the tenants smash them as soon as they are fixed.
10.-Kitchen sinks are not used by Chinese and should not be required.
11. As instancing what can be done by ordinary cleansing I may mention that Plague was very bad during the years preceding 1901 in the Wharf Company's employees' quarters at Kowloon.