-551-
"
ર
reply to Dr. Jordan's report the "Medical er of Health wrote the following minute: i am very glad indood that the Board has been furnished with the views of the Health Officer of the Port upou this most importaut subject, even though they are so emphatically opposed to my own, and some of the arguments adduced by him would certainly appear, to a casual observer, to be most conclusive, but au- fortunately they are all based upon false pre- ises and are therefore valueless as arguments against the adoption of a general medical in- spection of the shipping of this port. On page 3, for instance, he characterizes as ridiculous the idea that every one of the 2,030 (be givea this figure incorrectly as 2.300) passengers ar- riving daily in this port could produce a guar- antee of $50. If he had read my minute a little more carefully he would have seen that I made no such suggestion, the guarantee was only to:] be furnished by Asiatics, etc., arriving from ports which had been produimed as infected, in accordance with our existing Quarantine Reg- ulations, by the Governor in Council. On page 4, after having stated that scarcely one of the Chinese immigrants possesses 50 cents, he assumes that the same number will arrive daily. from an infected port and, instancing Canton and Macao as the proclaimed ports, asks how the ten days' accumulation of guaranteed par- sengers, amounting, he suggests, to 14,000, can possibly be adequately kept under surveillance, and quotes a minute by the Captain Superin- tendent of Police from C.8.0.974 in support of his contention. If he will look through some recent files of the Sanitary Board minutes he will find that the Captain Superintendent of Police is strongly in favour of probibiting ali Chinese immigration from infected ports, and a reference to Ordinance 5 of 1895 will show that from and after the publication of any such pen- clamation no passenger of Chinese nationality, whatever his means or respectability, may enter the colony by laud or sen from the proclaimed port. My suggestion is intended to obviare. Luis hariship by permitting the importation of. Chinese from infected ports on the conditioni that they can be kept under surveillance for a short period after landing, and the only way that I can suggest to effect this is by adopting the Chinese national custom of guarantee such as is already required of commou lodging-house keepers, liceused bostmon, Chinese constables, district watchmen, ricksha and chair ecolies. and even house-boys. The Health Officer of the Port must know that the furnishing of a guarantee by the above-named Chinese is purely a matter of insurance (the usual rate being ! about 5 per cont.) and that to avoid any such complication as that instanced by him in the second paragraph of page 5, the local shipping agents wishing to import Chinese from infected ports would probably act as their own under- writers in this mattor. In other words, it would cost a Chinowan desirous of shipping from a port which had been proclaimed as infected to Hong- kong about $2.50 more than the ordinary fare, and in this way would undoubtedly relieve the the colony of a number of destitute sick, while putting no insuperable difficulty in the way of the movements of the more reputable Chineas. In reference to the danger to the colony from the cases of cholera imported by the Cheang Bok Kian, it is useless to enter here into an ac- ademic discussion upon the etiology of this disease, for the Health Officer of the Port knows well enough that every outbreak of cholera that has occurred within the last fifty years has been traced more or less definitely to the contamination of drinking water. I now come to the question of the staff necessary to carry out a general medical inspection of the shipping of this port. It has been generally understood by the members of the Board at all discussions upon this subject that a medical inspection of passengers and crew of those steamers arriving in this port, carrying a surgeon, would be unnecessary provided that a certificate (somewhat similar to that furnished by the Customs officers at home) was signed by the Captain and countersigned by the surgeon, stating that there had been no sickness of an infections nature during the voyage, and that
581
the surgeon had seen every person on bea during the 24 hours previous to the arrival of the vessel, and was satisfied that they were all in good health. To prevent frand such surgeon must of course be a persoa entitled to be registered in this colony as a medical practitioner, under Ordinances & of 1884 and 4 of 1893. I can only regret that the Health Officer of the Port was not aware of this understanding among the members of the Board, and its non-appearance in our minutes results probably from the impression that this would be more a departmental regula- tion to be propounded at a later date when the first principles of the inspection had been de- finitely agreed to. When it is remembered that all the mail steamers (including the P. & 0., O, & O., N. P., and C. P. R., and the Holt, Chire, and Glou and probably other lines) all arry surgeons, it will be seen that not many of the thirteen steamers arriving daily will require a very prolonged visit from the boarding Me- dical Officer. Thus the time of these officers will be mostly occupied in attending to the junks and what is called local traffic, which is, in my opinion, a very important element in the intro- duction of infectious disease into the colony. I am willing to admit that I had not, in dealing with this question, considered the subject of the medical inspection of emigrants, but as the Health Officer considors this as an integral part of the port medical work (although most of it is, or may be, done on shore) I must now say that three medical officers would be required and that they should share the hours from sunrise to one hour after sunset. (In the port of Lon- dou feur assistant medical officers work the 24 hours round, each taking 6 hours duty.) It ap- pears that the Health Officer has somewhat overstated the aber of emigrants requiring medical inspection, for a reference to section 41 of Ordinance 1 of 1889 shows that only those proceeding to sox on a voyage of more than soven days' duratiou require certificatiou, and from the Colonial Treasurer's receipts for last year this uumber would appear to be about 230 per day instead of 593. Howovor, with three inedical officers I am convinced that the work could easily be accomplished between the hours
the
4
suprise and an our after Bunset, Alta Moreover, that the defly to shopping, especially steamers, would be infinitesimal. With regard to the maximum detention of 18 hours, it was, I thought, apparent that this was intended to cover the interval between 6 p.m. and 6 s.m. and allow an hour or two in case more than one vessel was awaiting inspection, and seeing that vessels do not as a general rule enter this port at night, I did not think any great hardship was involved. With three medical officers, however, the regulation could be made that no vessel arriving after sunset outside the boundary line should under any circumstances be detained later than three hours after sunrise the following day. As a matter of fact the defention of steamers would never amount to anything like the maximum time, seeing that loss than thirteen a day arrive in this port and that most of them carry surgeons, One word more as to the cost of this sche with three medical officers. No one can be a more ardent advocate of a free port than I am and I have therefore no intention of suggesting that any charge should be marie on the shipping for this medical inspection, but as a matter of curiosity I have worked out the cost per tou and per vessel and I find that the cost per ton would be one twentieth of a cent and the cost for each steamer arriving in this port would be an average of 60 cents and for each junk an average of 3 cents. I submit, therefore, that a general medical inspection of the shipping of this port is eminently practical (as practical, in fact, as its application has already proved in the port of London); that its cost would be couratively small, and that the protection to the oclony would be considerable. Also that the Board may in reason recommend the Govern ment of this colony to become a party to the Venice Convention and that the best way to deal with vessels arriving from infected ports is that detailed in my minute of the 20th ultimo.
The
571