May 19, 19003
of the natural resources of China in default of a strong and enlightened native Govern- ment, which it may be too hope for, may take-
place, think of the of the filaments
report, under an agreeme
of the Powers “to uphold at least the principle of com- mercial equality expressed in the Treaties of Tientsin." The assurances obtained by the United States from the other Powers of equality of treatment for foreign trade within their respective spheres of influence pave to a certain extent the way for a more general agreement on the development of the trade and resources of the Chinese Empire.
After a review of the general situation in Chiua, the Association's Report deals with individual matters, under the head of Rail- w.tys (where a very useful table is given of lines already built, building, or projected), Judicial Reform, a Scheme for Teaching Chinese for commercial purposes (a matter to which we are glad to see attention being devoted), the appointment of a Commercial Attaché at H.M. Legation at Peking, Tariff Revision, Inland Waterways, Coast Export of Rice, River Conservancy, the Upper Yangtaze navigation (now carried still further by the recent success of the Woodcock and Woodlark), Nauking, Hunan, the Shanghai Extension, Hankow, the Ex- tension of Hongkong, Hongkong Finance, Piracy in the Two Kwang, the C.D.O. (with special reference to Hongkong), Japan, Corea and the revised Consular Fees. From this list it can be seen how much ground was covered by the labours of the Association last year and how justified the chairman at the an- nual meeting, Mr. W. KESWICK, was in saying that they could not but feel that the | matters treated of in the report should carry the very greatest weight with the British Government, Certainly for plain state ments of the facts of each case no better book of reference could be found than the report before us.
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THE
845
Naturally
UNITED STATES AND THE
CHINA TRADE.
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
| was a comparatively unknown man, did not is the whole system of natare.
coincide with the views of the Italian inves- Major Ross's discoveries tigators, who held that with the production quiry as to whether they afford any
life of the organism of ameliorating the grievous censed; and for some time no progress was malarial fever, which next to tubercule made. The British Government, concerned is the antecedent cause of the largest mor- with the loss of life due to malarial disense tality to which the race subject. Major in India, instructed Dr., now Major, Ross Ross thinks it possible owing to the fnot to investigate the disease on the spot, and that the Anopheles never breeds in any, but the results of that investigation, which stagnant water, largely to alleviate "the In- lasted for some years. have appeared incidence of the disease by filling in or im- a complete history of the organism, and pregnating the ponds with a few simple its connection with the production and medicaments, such as coal-tar, &o. ¡ on the propagation of the disease. The story may other hand, however, it has to be borne in well rank as one of the romances of natural | mind that, although the Anopheles is a com- history, and exhibits how strange are the paratively rare mosquito, the 'effect of une connections of the animated world. Unlike | inoculation may last for an indefinite peric most of the other zymotic diseases with as the term during which the heman which we are acquainted, the fever of may propagate themselves asexually malaria owes its origin to the animal, not known, but is certainly prolonged. Know- the vegetable kingdom, and the means of its ledge is power, and though the result of propagation is a somewhat rare species of increased knowledge has not been as mosquito, the Anopheles, a gnat with grey yet to affect materially the sum of human spotted wings, which infests pools of stag, existence, there is still the hope that it will naut water. Till this discovery of the pecu materially lessen the sufferings to which liar microcosm, whose presence in the blood our ordinary life is subject. in greater or less numbers gives rise to the phenomena of malarial fever, there warn difficulty in accounting for its well-known periodicity; these new researches throw, however, a flood of light on the subject.
(Daily Press, 18th May.) The different descriptions of tever, tertian, The Bureau of Statistics of the United quartan or remittent are due to three dis- States Treasury Department_has_pub- | tinct species, whose term of maturity occurs lished a pamphlet of some two hundred after two, three, or more days, when, their and fiftyages entitled Commercial China active career being ended, the individuals in 1899, reprinted from The Sum- divide and assume for a time their compara.mary of Commerce and Finance for tively harmless stage. If now the infected March, 1899. Within the space of these subject be pierced by the proboscis of an pages is collected a mass of valuable in- Anopheles the blood with its charge of formation, much of it indeed old and to a organisms is taken into the internal organs great extent familiar to students of Chi- of the mosquito, where after a short term uese trade, but here for the first time the process which puzzled MANSON takes brought together in convenient form for place. A certain number of the spores, reference, The contents are grouped to which really are the male organisms, burst, gether under the headings of a General and the contained filaments rush through Review of Commercial China, Special State- the liquor till they meet with a female ments (including Consular Reports, Official spore, into which they at once enter. The Papers, extracts from the works of recog- result of this sexual act is the birth of a nized authorities, etc.), and Tables. At (Daily Press, 16th May.)
number of small spindle-shaped organisms, the first and last sections we do not propose Some fifteen or twenty years ago Dr. PAT which, moving with the circulating fluid of to look here. The general review is mainly RICH MANSON, a young English physican the mosquito, finally make their way to the a short history of European and American. then practising in Southern China, instituted salivary glands, whence, on the animal dealings with China, the establishment of a series of researches into the tropical di- piercing the human cuticle, they are forcibly colonies, treaty ports, etc., and accounts of seases there present, and amongst others ejected into the underlying tissue, to under- the various institutions which affect trade into malaria, which in the warmer regions go a similar role to their predecessors. If in China. The tables are purely statistical of the world is one of the most prevalent. the subject has been previously infected and cannot be dealt with satisfactorily in Much had been done previously by others, a portion of his blood is now sucked back conjunction with other matters. more especially in Italy, where from ancient into the system of the insect, where alone times malaria may be said almost to have the sexual reproduction takes place, and made its headquarters. Observation had thus the race of the hemamabide is kept shown that the blood taken from malarious alive, alternately in the human body patients invariably contained a large num- and that of the mosquito. Euch is the ber of small black spots, to which was given wonderful story told by Major Ross the name of Melanif, and which were, more-of the life-history of malaria in the over, shown to be associated with animal human subject. But our ordinary mosquito, parasites of a low order eventually classed though apparently guiltless as far as hemamœbæ, an order giving rise to a the human subject is concerned, has its own new generation by spontaneous division. part to play in the propagation of disease; Now the spores thus resulting circulated in the ordinary Culex pipiens performs the the blood of the living host without appar function of host to another species of ently performing any function whatever, hemamabæ, which produces a disease in some if a drop of the blood containing them of the smaller birds which experiment has withdrawn for microscopic examination, shown to be the analogue of malarial fever of his Asiatic rival, just as he would refuse
MALARIA AND THE MOSQUITO.
but
after a time a certain number of the bodies are found to burst, and from them to issue a number of threadlike filaments, which im- mediately begin to dart about in all directions. So far our knowledge had advanced when MANSON took up the task. He published a report of what he had learned thus far, and concluded that these threads were concerned in the carrying on of the generation of the hemamæbe, but was led to wrong deduc- tions as to the next step in the process. The conclusions of Manson, who at the time
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The second section undoubtedly forms the most interesting part of the pamphlet. As we have said, there is much that is old in the information collected; but there is also much that is stated in a fresh way or from a fresh point of view-mainly in the reports of the various United States Consuls at the different ports. Mr. J. R. JERNIGAN, the former Consul-General 28
at Shanghai, writes of Asiatic competition in the great manufacturing industries and deprecates any fear of competition from the manufac- turers of India, Japan,
¤, and China in t Americau home markets. The American labourer would naturally refuse the clothes
in the human patient; and doubtless as the investigation goes on it will be found that each class of the higher animals has its own gnat and its malarial disease. Indeed some of these, us the Texas cattle-fever, had been already known and described before these researches on the human disease came to be worked out, and a similiar course of investi- gation has shown like results in the case of certain reptiles. The research shows how minutely the apparently most remote types of life are related, and how closely bound
the
to be paid in the depreciated currency which the latter receives. But the Chinese de- mand for cheap clothes is likely to be met by Chinese cheap labour. Further, civili- eation will increase Chinese wants and pro-
Ma gress
anable them to supply these wants to the danger of the American (and, in the same way, the European) manufac turers, Hence the influence of cheap Asiatic labour is raised to the position of a question of natural importance. Taking the cotton-market as an example, Mr.