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that the practices to docs prevail largely in the East, and is tolerated if not commended by the feeling, a large numerical majority of the people.
at any time to hope for the avoidance, or suppression of a difficulty by ignoring its existence. I apprehend therefore that this Government must accept as a fact the existence of this practice of getting rid of moribund patients here as at Canton.
It is true that parties leaving dying people to perish are sometimes caught and punished by the local Police here, but this does not occur once for 20 cases where there is reason to suspect that the bodies of those found dead had been exposed before life was entirely extinct.
There are always establishments in Chinese cities where moribund patients can be sent as there are also establishments where coffins containing dead bodies hermetically sealed are kept, sometimes for many years, and often at considerable cost, till it suits the convenience of relatives to inter them finally. In what is called the City of the dead at Canton there are seldom less than 10,000 bodies awaiting removal to their final resting place.
I do not think it at all unnatural therefore that Chinese instinct and superstition should have endeavored to establish a similar institution in this city containing.
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