The name of the village was taken to be that of the whole island? The designation having been thus applied was easily retained, and the Colony of "Hongkong" eventually arose from those earlier associations of seafarers with the little settlement on the south coast.
William Tarrant was one of a hardy race of newspaper editors which flourished in this Colony for many decades. His guiding hand directed the destinies of the Friend of China, and that same hand wrote some of the most stinging editorials which have ever found their way into print.
It was he who once accused an acting Colonial Secretary of being in league with all the pirates of the China coast. Naturally, he spent much of his time in prison, but all his writings were not destructive.
He published at least one book, "Hongkong, 1839 to 1844" and in this volume deals at length with the epidemic of fever which took such heavy toll of human life in 1843.
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"The year 1843 was a very eventful one in the Colony's history," wrote Mr. Tarrant, "not only by its being the first year of its charter, and seeing as its visitors the greatest of Chinese functionaries, but because during it, there was a period of sickness and mortality such as we hope the island may never see again. The troops were the first to feel the effects of the epidemic, and Committees were appointed to investigate the causes, which medical men decided came from rank vegetation in the vicinity of the Barracks, especially those at West Point.
The doctors were partially, if not altogether at fault. It was not the rank vegetation so much as the absence of those medical comforts, for the want of which the China Expedition of 1840, 1841 and 1842 suffered so frightfully. What the men wanted was stimulating nourishment - instead of which, directly a soldier complained, the surgeon of the Regiment stopped his rum, and gave him neither wine nor peppermint in lieu of it.
That was, we believe, the chief cause of the great mortality in the garrison in 1843. With civilians, however, this would not serve for a reason; and it will be useful in this place to introduce Dr. Dill's opinion of the causes of fever in the Colony, as given in a paper read in 1845, before the then existing China Medico-Chirurgical Society.
"The great mortality, which has taken place in this island," said Dr. Dill, "calls loudly for an investigation into the nature, causes, and treatment of the disease. From my own experience and from what I have heard from other medical gentlemen, I believe the fevers of Hongkong might be reduced to four kinds. With some modifications, I would therefore propose calling them, Intermittent, Bilious Remittent (or marsh fever), Marsh Congestive, and Ardent fever. The two latter forms, I consider to be those which produced such ravages in the Island in the years 1843 and 1841 and which received the name of 'Hong Kong fever'. It would occupy too much of your time for me to dwell on all these different kinds of fever at length. I shall, therefore, attend more particularly to the two latter forms which deserve our first consideration as being generally fatal.
"Of the causes of fever generally in hot climates, and more particularly in Hongkong, there have been many theories advanced. The three kingdoms of nature, the animal, vegetable...
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