August 29, 1903,
STATEMENT BY H.E. THE GOVERNOR.
left unsaid, but
80
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CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
with the
ia
it
*
It was a question also whether more good or injury was done by the limewashing of a rooni not open to sunlight and without a firep! (ce thanked them for the opportunity they had and leaving the walls in a wet condition. ~He
He had already expressed his gratitude to Mr given him of carying out this experiment. Fog Wa Chun for the assistance he had afforded him. Then he knew they had been the local h spital that he established in Third considering the question of local hospitals. Now
Street was a very primitive affair, but there was no doubt in his own mind that if losal hospitals were established and properly looked this hospital was properly looked after-with after-because he did not pretend to say that all the appliances of a local hospital and all the nourishment that the patients required and were able to take-if a fow such hospitals were would reduos the disinclination of the people to established he hoped and believed that they
had a very ominous name for the ordinary Chi go to Kennedytown, which, they must remember,
nese; and if they o ald only spread the system get from them the same hearty assistance that of kaifongs or strat committees they might
he gratefully acknowleged he got from the committees of the wastern district. They would find in the return what was perhaps the only real, rustworthy census that had ever living in every one of those 614 floors appeared been taken here; every man, woman and child
that had not been done by him or by Inspector in the census; and they had to remember that
Gidley, who had worked for hia, but the it to them. It showed in the first place what kaifongs worked it out themselves and presented
he thought they hul not known bɔfore-tha real proportion of people living in that distriot and the preval nce of overcrowding from in considering all the sanitary matters the point of view of public health Still they must not forget that the ultimate result
of the naw Ordinance must be to double the rent of every floor. He thought he was right in saving that a house which built under
A SANITARY EXPERIMENT. lines, and they had no idea of progress. Here again they were got together, au agricultural society, with small branches, was established. On the 25th inst. in the Legislative Council trained men were secured to teach the negros leading local men gave their assistance, and Chamber, H. E. the Governor met the members what they ought to do. of the Sanitary Board for the purpose of society at Jamaica was the most ourishing Now that agricultural submitting a statement as to the results of institution in the island, the people were the recent adminstration of the experimental blocks of houses in Sec nd and Third Streets, improving their methods, and the island was be Those present were-Hon. Dr. J. M. Atkinson, kong, His Excellency said, they had bean faced coming more and more prosperous. In Hong- Principal Civil Medical Officer; Hon. W. Chatham, Director of Public Works; Dr. W.
sime conditions; they were face W. Pearse, Acting Medical Officer of Health;
to face with a great difficulty, but they entered Mr. C. McI. Messer Acting Registrar-General; leave nothing undone that money ould accom- apon their task with the determination to Captain F. W. Lyons, Acting Captain Super-plish in the effort to try to reduce the ravages intendent of Police; Colonel Webb, RA.M.C.; that pl.gue was responsible for. That the Mr. E. A. Hewett, Mr. Fung, Wa Chuo, Mr. Colony had not been skimped in the mattr Lau Chu Pak, and Mr. Rumjahn, The Hon. of sanitation would be realised when F. H. May, Colonial Secretary, also attended.
Addressing the moeting, HIS EXCELLENCY satitation was about 396,000; in 1893, in round was slated that in 1897 the expenditure on said he had deferred it until he had first numbers, it was $105,000; and the estimited ex- prepared a memorandum which those present had penditure for next year was $481,00. N.body, received giving an account of the experiment therefore, could say that money had been that, with the permission of the Sanitary Board, spared or denied on sauitation in Hongkong, he entered upon. That experiment, he assured but so far as concerned this particular disease, them, had not been undertaken from mere plague, we were just where we were in 1897. curiosity, but from an anxious desira to investigate into this scourge of plague, whose extend their help, but there still existed a The people, however, were now more inclined to annual recurrence carried away valuable lives and inflicted such injury upon the
may doubt, a suspicion, a distrust of authority that was not confined to the Chinese alone, bat was business of the Colony. He ventured to enter really found in certain classes in all countries. upon that experiment because he felt that as a layman he might dara to attempt countries that if the people were approached it was His Excellency's experience in other that from which professional mea would probably shrink. For ver
in the proper spirit and trusted a little way ten years now plague had swept dvor the Colony annually, present read the memorandum placed before they would respond, and if the gentlemen like a typhoon, sweeping away thou- sands in its path, and bafore its ravages
them they would find that in that small area in the Western d strict handed over sanitary precautions and medical science had alike been ineffectual. As regarded the memo-
to His Excellency, ao area picked out as being randum, His Excellency proceeded, he might by a very poor class of Chines, the people did amongst the worst in the Colony, and inhabited therein have said something that perhaps some of those present thought would have been better respond, and responded most sa isfactorily. He had no hesitation in saying, went on His Excel- he was of opinion in lency, that the co-operation and activity of the framing it that it would be better both for the public and for them that nothing kaifong were worthy of any people of their class should be omitted which might reader more
any country. It behoved them, it behoved the the old Ordinance would cost $2,000 would now complete or effective any arrangements made
members of the Sanitary Board as the people cost $2500. It would cost 2 per cent, more to for carrying on the business of fighting this
in whose hands the carrying out of sanitary build and it would accommodate only three- measures lay, and it behoved him, who could fifths of the inhabitants. The effect of the new epidemic in the future. To begin with, he was quite satisfied that no sanitary arrangements
not divest himself of the responsibility that law therefore would be to very largely increase which could be made would ever be efficiently to look closely after the welfare of the com-
rested upon the shoulders of every Governor, the expenses of house rent to the poor people of or economically carried out until the co-
the town and increase also the expenses of munity, to sea low far in th coming year labour,
} operation of the people had been secured. Here, as elsewhere, it had been the habit to say
they could be in a position to forestall the dis- that this co-operation of the people was not
ease that, as sure as the sun would rise on the morrow, would be possible--that it could not be attained. The that it might not be so, but he was afraid, His upon us next spring. God grant speaker had been intimately associated with the Excellency said, that it would be so. Sections government of all sorts and conditio.s of men, from his own mercurial countrymen to the
22 and 23 of the memorandum showed in Esquimeans of the Far North of Labrador, the and the paint that was in his mind-groping in how many ways plague had been dessimated, negro of the West Indies, and now the repre- sentatives here of the Chinese race, whose
the dark, as he supposed most of our savants civilisation had
were-was that probably it was propagated by existed for thousands of
insects to a very years longer than ours; and he found that
great extent; and if that was if the people were only approached in a
so then to his mind the insects to attack in dealing with the prevention proper spirit they could be induced to of plague were the insects in the house follow the course marked out for them. the bed-bug and the flea. They were
was very much the same, going to spend next in the East as in the West.
year $30,000 on As Shylock disinfectants and $10,000 on co lie hire. If said-" If you prick m3, will bleed; if you tickle me, will I not laugh; if they could establish tanks for boiling the furni- you poison me, will I not die; if you wrong me, will I not avenge ?" In Labrador, the nomad Esquimeau had been taken posses- sion of by sympathetic action; the Moravian Mission established there had by its exertions transformed these nomad Esqui meaux, who possessed among themselves no elements of higher feeling, into a respectable, law-abiding, trading community. Whilst in the West Indies, continued His Excellency, he remembered that a great scare of cholera occurred in the Bahamas. There all the water
procured from was
surface wells, which were very dirty. The general idea that the position was desperate, because the islands were inhabited by a primitive population of negroes. His Excellency got those people together, and asked them to do something for themselves. He explained to them where the danger was and told them what to do to get their wells cleaned and keep them elean. Arrangements to that end were carried
Human nature
not
was
out the wells were cleaned and made per- fectly safe. In Jamaica, as in most places, the negroes were very improvident; their farming was conducted on very primitive
ture the bed-boards-as they had done in the
|
district of which he spoke, aud, as Dr. Atkinson and Dr. Pearse knew, if they could give the people an opportuni y of themselves boiling well expendel; and it was a question worth that primitive furniture, it would be money considering whether some of the money that not be better expended by providing tanks was going to be put into limewashing would
and boiling water. What they had to aim at was efficiency and economy. They would find from the last report of Dr. Hunter-for whose co operation he was very grat ful all through in this matter that those hugs in which plague had been found lived in a 3 or 4 per cent. Jeyes fluid, when totally immersed, for about 15 minutes; and even in the strongest solution for about 50 seconds. In that case they would have to consider whether the process of disinfection by an ordinary coolis with a solution of Jeyes faid, which might or might not be of that strength, of that furniture, would be so to do it aud dip the furniture into boiling effective as if they got the people themselves.
water. Of course it was a simple matter There was nothing heroic about it, but it might save money and lives-certainly the former.
for labour would bear all the increased expenses in the future. Therefore in carrying out sanitary measures it behoved them for the sake of the people who had to pay the piper to try to obtain o-operation that would give them the same or better results with the saving of a great deal of money. That with sympathy, and he was sure it would always could only be done by approaching those people
meet with a r sponse from them, and he saw no reason why it should not be tried. They had a neuclens in that district, and they might possibly try it in that district. He commended it to them, and again he thanked them for having given him the opportunity of trying
this, one of the most interesting experiences he had ever had in his life.
Hon. Dr. ATKIN ON said that considera
tion of the question of establishing tanks all over the City was deferred until the present me ting had been held, but it would be entered in o seriously at the meeting of the Sanitary Board on Thurs lay, and the result the Government of the discussion would be communicated to at the earliest moment. Personally,
Fr. Atkinson thought the establishment of tanks all over the Colony
rather too big an order to at ouce, sud he suggested that probably a better scheme would be to introduce it slowly, and, in the first instance, to try to get em ployers of labour-the cotton mills, and so
was
ɑɔmmença
to establish tanks of the kind mentioned for their workmen, sinos they hại so useful in the experimental blook, and, for merly, in the cooli premises of the G Company at Kowloon. If they could p Jardines to establish something of the sort at East Point, very probably the Dock pany and other large employers would follow suit; in this way
As it was the intention of the might be done to attain the objec
Dr. Atkinson took it, to build bath-houses all over the Colony might be introduced in connection with