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I inspected it. Nothing could be more entirely satisfactory than its arrangements, and so far as I could see nothing was wanting in the treatment or the surroundings. Yet there must be some cause for the exceptional mortality. On reading the report of the action taken last year in Bombay I found that patients were allowed to remain in their houses to be nursed by their friends under proper restrictions, and early in May I suggested that the experiment might be tentatively tried here, but the suggestion was not accepted by the Sanitary Board. Personally I have little doubt that with such a regulation the mortality would not be so high. The Plague hospital is at the extreme Western extremity of the town and the carriage of a plague-stricken patient in an ambulance, which, until I ordered wheeled ambulances with pneumatic tyres consisted of a cot slung upon a pole, and carried for two or three miles by two coolies, could not be conducive to recovery of the patient.
On the 10th May, I authorised the erection of a matshed plague hospital at Yaumati on the Kowloon Peninsula and obtained from Major-General Gascoigne the services of Dr. Stewart of the Indian Medical Service