661
€2,
In fact the Beard is a very sick patient subject to a chronic flatulent cholie expelling a great amount of offensive wind with considerable noise, many emphatic and impolite ejaculationg and little or no movement being the symptoms of its disease.
When the plague began a small and Permanent Committee of the Sanitary Board was appointed to see necessary things done to stamp out its invasion. The meetings were held daily and in the beginning were father of a stormy character. There was no gallery, I mean no reporters, but the majority meant business and would recognize no rights but the public welfare, and landlords and lessees who had fattened on the profits of the disgusting and filthy dens for years had to submit to forego those profits for the future. Many houses have been taken away from them altogether and the Land Resumption (adinance put in force; scores of other houses have been closed as unfit for human habitation until the required alterations necessary to render them fit are made; hundreds of others have had a definite period fixed to put them in order with the threat of closure unless those orders are obeyed. And it has been shown very definitely that a great deal could be done in a very short time when necessity that knows no law required it.
The Chinese have received a very necessary and salutory lesson that riots and strikes will no longer be permitted to override the law, and I desire to protest against their being permitted any interference in or control over hospitals for epidemic disease in the future after our experience of the past year.
I deprecate any accommodation being sauctioned by Government for plague patients not under European supervision in the immediate neighbourhood of the Colony in future. The condition of things existing at the Lai-Chi-Kok Hospital and cemetery was correctly described by the medical staff employed by the Government in their letter dated July 2nd, 1894. The reports given by other medical men at the request of Government dated July 8th, 1894, although the hospital had been specially cleansed and prepared with supplies of disinfectants for their reception, confirmed the danger to the Colony of this institution, for they said-"The whole number of patients under treatment was "58...... Of this number about one third were suffering from plague and less than half came from Hongkong. The plague patients were scattered promiscuously amongst the others." This was while we were doing our best in the Colony to single out plague patients, and these other patients were daily being dismissed from the hospital to spread the infection they had contracted in the hospital over the Kowloon peninsula. That they did so was fully proved by the faer that only a few isolated cases appeared on the Kowloon peninsula before the Troops had thoroughly cleansed and white-washed all the honses, yet after this had been done and when the plague was fast dying out in Hongkong in the latter part of July the plague cases were steadily increasing on the Kowloon peninsula and it continued there to the last, the latest case occurred in October long after any case occurred in Hongkong and the youth died in hospital three days after.
Morcover a patient, that had been deported from the Tung Wa Plague Hospital in the Cattle Depôt by Government orders to Lai-Chi-Kok Hospital, left that hospital of his own accord, carne through Kowloon across in one of the Chinese ferries, wandered through the City of Victoria back to the Cottle Depôt Hospital where he died twenty-four hours after.
The letter written by Dr. MOLYNEUX dated July 12th, on the condition of the Lai-Chi-Kok graveyard and its dangers was, in every particular, correct. The show graves of fairly decent depth, described by the Medical Officers who reported at the request of Government on the 8th of July, remained empty although other i tern ents had been made in the graveyard only a few inches deep. On July 17th Mr. FRANCIS, the President of the Permanent Committee of the Sanitary Board, ant myself visited the Lai-Chi-Kok graveyard and confirmed Dr. MOLYNEUX's statements in every particular, the show graves remained unfilled though still more interments had taken place. The heap of lime remained in statu que and practically none had been used in the graves.
Later on Surgeons MEADON and BEAL BLOCK, who were inspecting all junks and sampans coming into Hongkong, discovered the line, that had been taken over to Lai-Chi-Kok Hospital for show purposes, being exported back to Hongkong,
For these reasons, which are trets which cannot he disputed. should deportation be considered necessary. It should at least be nowhere except to Canton, and not allowed to any place in the immediate neighbourhood of the Colony,
As for the Sanitary Board now that the scare is over it seems fast relapsing into the "do nothing" principle until the Unofficial membara ger all they demand constituting themselves the public repre- sentatives and being in reality only that of a very small p rtion of the public, and the n cessity of its reform in some way is fully demonstrated. As a compulsory member of the Boar I words are insuff- cient to express my disgust at, in any way, being a part of it.
As regards a Municipal Council I have no belief in the possibility of such an institution. The con- munity is too small and the conflicting interests of its members too great. To give a forcible illustra- tion of this being a fact look at the Directors of the many Companies in the Colony. la there a single Company in this Colony whose Directors have not been held up to execration in letters to the papers and in articles in the papers, being accused of subordinating the interests of the shareholders to their own interests, of appropriating emoluments when there were no dividends, &c.? I would like to see a list of representative men of position, who think they have the confidence of the public, who would consent to become members, or whose firm would consent to their time being given for such a purpose in these days of high pressure. frequent telegraph instructions coming every hour in the twenty-four, and with mails coming in and going out daily.
Such an institution is recognized as a necessity in Shanghai and for the interest of all concerned in the Settlement, but the chosen few would in many cases be glad to get out of it if they could.
X