The early hospitals, together with the naval and military hospitals, which were erected on the site of the present barracks in the centre of the town (where Wellington Barracks are now situated) were soon overcrowded with patients.
This has reference to the first few years of the Colony's existence; and it is recorded:
"In the summer of 1843 occurred an extraordinary outbreak of Hongkong fever which, during the six months from May to October (the rainy season, be it noted) carried off by death twenty-four per cent of the troops and ten per cent of the European civilians. It was noticed that this virulent fever ravaged chiefly the extreme eastern and western ends of the settlement, whilst the central parts of the city and especially the gaol escaped untouched (a state of affairs noticeable practically until to-day, so far as malaria infection is concerned). At Westpoint Barracks, above what is now Pokfulum Road, where the Indian troops had lost nearly half their number in 1842, sickness was so universal in 1843 that the European troops stationed there were hastily removed, in July that year, on board ships in the harbour.
On an average each man (of the garrison) passed through hospital more than five times during that dreadful year. Statistics show that out of 1,526 troops, 440 died that year, and of these fatalities 155 were due to fever. Again:
"The number of men invalided or unfit for duty was such that frequently no more than one half of the men of a company were able to attend parade, and sometimes there were hardly five or six men, out of 100 fit for duty."
These circumstances must have appeared well-nigh appalling to the early comers, and that they countered the adverse condition as best they could, and eventually made a success of the Colony, speaks volumes for the perseverance and indomitable spirit of those pioneers – an aspect of the early days that we are perhaps prone to overlook when thinking merely in terms of trade and politics.
The old records also state that for some years, in the Forties, seamen were not permitted to go ashore when they put into Hongkong, for fear that they would fall sick. In some cases crews passed as long as a week confined to their ships, and this appears to have had the effect of reducing the incidence of fever among the seafarers who touched here. Nowadays we see in this the fact that ships anchored some distance from the shore, for brief periods were not likely to be visited by mosquitoes: but in those days it was thought that the sailors breathed in a poisonous miasma from the Hongkong soil.
There was naturally much discontent among the men, and we read that this iron discipline was relaxed after a few years; it being admitted that on certain vessels the seamen fell sick even when prevented from going ashore, some infected Anopheles mosquitoes having evidently...
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