April 21, 1902.]
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CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
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signs. One is the influenza. The plague, dislodge from the public brain. The fact is, Some epidemics are confined to particn'ar cholera, &c., have all been heralded by this dis- that the condensed air of a crowded room gives latitudes; though most, after having been The first attack of cholera in England a deposit which, if allowed to remain for a few engendered in the tropics, pass onward to was preceded by an outbreak of influenza, which days, form a solid, thick, glutinous mass, having the north, without losing anything of their resembled in the winutest particular that which a strong colour of animal matter. If examined power. The yellow fever is the most definite ushered in the mortal Sweating Sickness of by the microscope it is seen to undergo a re- in its range. Incapable of existing under fifteen hundred and seventeen; and the cholera markable change. First of all, it is converted either extreme of heat or cold-stopped by of eighteen hundred and forty-eight was pre-into a vegetable growth, and this is followed by the blowing of a cool wind for only a few ceded by the influenza of eighteen hundred and the production of multitudes of animalcnles, a hours, and unknown under rny other thermo- forty-seven. The other sign, Dr. Smith says, decisive proof that it must contain organic metrical readings than from between seventy- is the general transformation of the type of matter, otherwise it could not nourish organic six and eighty-six degrees as soon as it ceases ordinary diseases into the characteristic type of beings. This was the result arrived at by Dr. its true form it is transformed to typhus; the approaching pestilence." |
Angus Smith in his beautiful experiments on typhus commencing precisely at the line Epidemics are periodical. The first appear- the Air and Water of Towus, wherein he whbre yellow fever ends. This fact that cer- ance of the Sweating Sickness was in fourteen showed how the lungs and skin give out organic! tain epidemics are engendered by places and hundred and eighty-five. It spread over Eng-matter, which is in itself a deadly poison, pro- circumstances, not carried about by persons, land for a year. then disappeared. After a ducing-headache, sickness, disease, or (pidemic, is greatly insisted on, with a view to abolish lapse of twenty years it broke out again, weut according to its strength. Why, if a fow all personal quarantine, where the climate over all its former haunts and after six months drops of the liquid matter, obtained by a con-ยก renders the introduction of certain forms of died away.
In eleven years it came again, and densation of the air of a foul locality, introduced disease impossible.
Better into the rein of a dog, can produce death with again died away in six months; a fourth time
house arrangements, better food, cultivation of landi, including it returned after a sleep of eleven years, con- the usual phenomena of typhus forer," what improved tinued six months, then disappeared. Its fifth inculeniable evil must it not produce on those especially drainage, and the cutting down of and last visitation was after a period of twenty-human beings who breathe it again and again. buge forests, wider streets, and better means three years. It raged-as it bad raged before rendered fouler and less capable of sustaining of cleansing them-all these are among the -in six months, as nenal, disappeared; and. life with each breath drawn? Such contamina- reasons why civilisation is ranked as one of since then, this was in fifteen hundred and tion of the air, and consequent hot bed of fever the great causes of amelioration in the type fifty-one, it has never been known in any and epidemic, it is easily within the power of man of epidemics, whether ordinary or extraordinary. country whatsoever. The Oriental plague to remore. Ventilation and cleanliness will do That eternal myth of the Good Old Times breaks out in the East about every ten years; all, so far as the abolition of this evil goes, and fades into a very sorry reality what one looks the fever epidemics of London occur every ten ventilation and cleanliness are not miracles at it narrowly! In the substitution of fresh or twelve years; the Irish typhus epidemics to be prayed for, but certain results of common for salt meat, and in the introduction of vege have been decennial visitations for the last hun- obedience to the laws of God,
tables, our dietary table has infinitely reduced the Besides this human contamination, the | chances of disease and mortality as compared dred and fifty years. Epidemic cholera remained with us fifteen months, on its first visitation. atmosphere itself undergoes changes which with what they were in the Good Old Times. After sixteen years it broke out again, for predispose it to the levelopment and spread Even as late as the eighteenth century, fresh exactly fifteen months, as before. Again this of epidemics. Inversions of the seasons, long salads were sent from Holland for the table of time after only five years' absence it came for droughts followed by heavy rains, mists, and Queen Caroline, and Sir John Pringle, writing seventeen months; coming earlier and staying every form of continuous damp combined in the middle of the last century, states that longer than it had done before. According to with exessive heat, giving rise, first, to inor- his father's gardener told him that in the time this rule we may expect it again, after even a dinate growths of the lower species of vege-of his grandfather cabbages were sold for a tation, then to swarms of locusts, flies, cator-crown a-piece. It was not until the close of the shorter absence.
Epidemics are rapid in their effects. Death pillars, frogs, &c., and, as the sequence of sixteenth century (fifteen hundred and eighty- antecedent conditions, dearth and five) that the potato was first brought to generally occurs after a few hours: seldom, if these the disease can be protracted. The great object famine. Such, in all ages, have been the England, where it was limited to the garden of all modern treatment for cholera, for in- signs and precursors of a coming year of for at least a century and a half after it had stance, is to gain time; for, if the disease does pestilence. During our own cholera epidemic, been planted by Sir Walter Raleigh in his own the air has been observed to be wonderfully garden. It was first callivated as a field-crop not kill at once, the patient will oftener recbrer than die, after a prolonged attack. It is the still and stagnant, both by day and night; in Scotland in the year seventeen hundred and
and when the last plague visited Viouna, fifty-two. shock, rather than exhaustion, that destroys.
What there had been no wind for three months. We all know what sanitary effects result from' Lastly, epidemics are alike in cause. may have produced one epidemic at one period. For several weeks, too, before the Great the free use of fresh vegetables and fresh meat; will produce another at another period: the Plague of Loudon, the air had been so calm, so that, if we will but improve other things as *terrific much as we have improved our national diet, difference consisting in the form and name, not it could not stir a rane: and the in the canse. Over-crowding, filth, exhalations outbreak of cholera at Kurrachee, was pre- we may hope for the gradual extinction of We have it in our own from fonl sewers, rivers, ditches, canals, &c.. ceded for some days by such a stagnation epidemical disease. putrescent animal or vegetable matter, impure of the atmosphere that an oppression scarcely power. We hold the power, as we hold every drinking-water, unwholesome meat, decayed to be endured affected the whole population." faculty and privilege we possess, in trust from vegetables unsound grain, these are some of A. deficiency of electricity and a total absence the Creator of all things and all creatures. `If the predisposing personal causes of epidomics, of ozone are among other meteorologic 1 s'gus. we once fairly understand and learn the grea. which make all those living under such con. Such atmospheric conditions as these, brooding lesson. that man can control nature, we shal over the lanes and courts of an uncleansed and then turn our time to better account. Industry ditions more likely to be attacked than those in healthier circumstances. Of all predisposing over-populated city, must necessarily produce a cleanliness, forethought, knowledge, above al Yet even then and thus, and such chemical and physiological knowledge causes foul air ranks as chief. Wave several burst of disease.
of as will teach us practical health, these are striking proofs of this in the late cholera. notwithstanding the tremendous force At Tooting, thirteen hundred and ninety-five atmospheric influences, cleanliness, care, and enemies to epidemics, and in a fair fight they even must conquer. What a terrible reflection it pauper children were crowded into a space which forethonght can stop the spread, or was large enough for only five hundred. Sixty-prevent the rise, of epidemics. Dr. South-is, to think that hundreds and thousands of our where certain conditions fellows-creatures have died preventible deaths, four of these children were attacked by cholera wood Smith says, in one night; and in a week a hundred and exist, epidemics break out and spread: where and that we are literally suicides and murderers eighty had died. This, because of overcrowd- those conditions do not exist, epidemics do not from blind adhesion to ignorance and dirt!
break out and spread; and where those con- ing and of the scanty allowance of hundred cubic feet of air to each child, when ditions did exist, but have been removed, there- five hundred cubic feet is the smallest quantity upon epidemics cease to break ont and spread." compatible with safety. In the Taunton work- Overcrowding, the accumulation of filth in and house there were two hundred and seventy-six about all dwelling-places, personal uncleanliness, inmates with sixty-eight cubic feet of air for improper food and impure water, stagnant diches, fon drains, marsh lands and the like, each. Cholera carried off sixty in less than a week. In the county jail of Taunton, where all these and other conditions of the same class the criminals were allowed from eight hundred | it is within the power of man to alter or remove. and nineteen to nine hundred and thirty-five The epidemics of the tropics differ somewhat cubic feet of air, not a single case of cholera, from those of the temperate zones. There, nor even of diarrhoea, occurred. At East where vegetation is so rank, and organic life so Farleigh, in Kent, one thousand people were profuse-insects filling the lower strata of the assembled for hop-picking. They were lodged atmosphere to the height of fifteen or twenty
8 m. on the 14th inst, fire in sheds, and had about eighty cubic feet of air feet-epidemics are more violent and sudden each to breathe. Ninety-seven were struck then with ns. The outbreak of cholera alluded broke out in a Chinese medicine-shop at 293, down by cholera, while in the same village to, in the Eighty-sixth Regiment, at Kurrachee, Queen's Road Central, and spread to the first, hundred and forty-six, was a and second floors, both of which, with the another employer, who had provided proper in eight en accommodation for his work-people, did not striking instance of the fierce velocity of ground floor, were completely burnt out. A lose one by the epidemic. All through the tropical epidemics. After a period of damp, high wind was blowing at the time, and the overcrowded streets of London, last year, the hot, stagnaut, and oppressive weather-for firemen were lucky in confining the flames to cholera raged with violence; whilst in the more days not a breath of air stirring-suddenly the one house. No fresh water, as usual open spaces, other sanitary conditions being forty men were seized with cholera in one night. nowadays, was obtainable, and the necessary observed, not a case was recorded. People In two days more, two hundred and fifty-six supply had to be taken from the barbour. The have often said that no difference can be detected had been attacked in all, of whom one bundred premises are insured with the Commercial in the analysation of pure and impure air. and thirty-one were already dead. We have Union Company for $6,500, which will probably This is one of the vulgar errors difficult to ' had nothing like this in our cholera epidemics, cover the amount of the damage.
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HONGKONG.
The visitors to the City Hall Library and Museum last week included 238 non-Chinese and 59 Chinese to the former and 62 non- to the latter Chinese and 1,280 Chinese institution.
Among the passengers per Shinano Maru, which arrived on the 13th inst., were eight special plague doctors, who have been engaged by the Sanitary Board on the recommendation of the Chinese members.
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