664
: 10-
recognised prophylactic measures against Plague, or to improve the Sanitary Conditions of the Colony.
26.-In forwarding Dr. Lowson's report to the Government, the late Colonial Surgeon, on 2nd March, 1895, wrote as follows:
The necessity for remedying the results of faulty construction of the houses in the Chinese quarters, the want of ventilation, light and air in them, the impossibility of keeping them clean and wholesome, the inadequate water supply, the want of proper drainage, the overcrowded condition of the houses, the filthy condition of wells, the necessity for proper latrine accommodation, and the enormous amount of filth collected in the houses have now been fully revealed. I first called the attention of Government to the state of things I have mentioned in my report dated the 15th April, 1874, within six months of my arrival in this Colony. In this report I mentioned by name the streets and lanes, and the position of many gullies without a name in that portion of Taipingshan which has now been walled in, and the condition of filth in which I found the houses, also streets and alleys in other portions of the town; almost the same state of things was found in 1894. Yet a further special report was sent in by a Commission appointed to verify the statements made in my report which was sent in in May 1875. In 1880 Mr. Chadwick arrived with a Royal Commission to investigate the condition of things described, and his full report to the Secretary of State appeared in a Blue Book. Six years afterwards he again visited the Colony and expressed his surprise at finding how little had been done to remedy the state of things he had described, and again reported on them. Many laws have been made in the twenty years previous to 1894 to remedy the insanitary state of the Colony, but most have remained dead letters owing to the difficulties of enforcing them and the prejudices of the Chinese especially and other sections of the community.
Since 1874 the divisions of the City of Victoria inhabited by Chinese have increased more than three-fold in size, and the new portions are in nearly as bad a condition as the old.
The labours of Hercules in cleansing the Augean stables were a trifle compared with that which the Government has to contend with in the near future in cleansing the City of Victoria and other inhabited portions of the Colony.
27.—Dr. J. A. Lowson attributed the predisposing causes of plague to be "insanitary conditions, of these, filth and overcrowding must be reckoned as two of "the most important factors." The main causes of the spread of the disease he attributed to the following:-
(1) Want of means for the isolation of people who were almost certainly incubating the disease.
(2) The grossly insanitary condition of the latrines.
(3) Overcrowding.
(4) Want of efficient house scavenging and the filthy habits of the inhabitants.
Those were the most potent factors in the spread of the epidemic; and these simple but urgent matters should be put right forthwith. While I write this, the houses in First Street and several other streets not far from the Government Civil Hospital are in as bad a condition as—if not worse than—they were in April 1894.
28-In the same Report (page 356, Government Gazette, 1895) Dr. Lowson said: "I am convinced that an epidemic of plague in Hongkong could be tackled and got under rapidly if men in sufficient number could be got to do the work." Yet with the experience of recurring epidemics of Plague since 1894 we find a completely undermanned Medical Staff endeavouring to grapple with it in the present year, in which from January to June, there have been over 1,400 reported cases. At the height of the epidemic there was one Medical Officer on duty at the Infectious Hospitals for European and Asiatics at Kennedy Town, who was compelled through want of accommodation to reside a mile from the hospitals, and whose duties also included attendance on the Prisons and the Police. A civil practitioner was not appointed to relieve the official doctor of a portion of his duties until the matter had been ventilated in the Public Press. There is but one Medical Officer of Health, who is assisted by one Sanitary Surveyor and twenty Inspectors of Nuisances, who are without special training. This is the Public Health staff to look after a community of over 280,000 persons, the lower classes of whom are most careless and insanitary in their habits. A Sanitary Inspector takes ten months to visit thoroughly his health district, a duty which should be done daily, and there is only one Inspector for the whole of the markets in the Colony. In the city of Liverpool with its population of 668,615, against that of Hongkong of 288,415, there are no less than 97 sanitary inspectors, 52 of whom hold the certificate of the Sanitary Institute, and whose previous training and occupation have been such as to fit them for the special duties they are called upon to discharge. With a population approximating to half that of Liverpool we have but twenty Inspectors without training or certificates to deal with an Asiatic population requiring more than ordinary supervision.
29.-Attention might also be called to the fact that the appointment of the important post of Boarding Health Officer of this great shipping centre has hitherto been given to local practitioners, whose private practice naturally interferes with their Harbour duties, with the result that Mail and other steamers have been subjected at various times to vexatious and unnecessary detentions. In consequence of the strong representations which have recently been made by the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce to the effect that the Port Health Officer should give his undivided attention to his shipping duties, the Government has given assurances that the Medical inspection of shipping visiting the Colony shall be placed on a more satisfactory footing, still the present system is so radically faulty that we deem it advisable to invite attention to the subject.
30.-So serious has the position become that the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce addressed the Government on the 7th June, 1901, and a copy of such letter and H.E. the Governor's reply are attached:
SIR,
Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce, Hongkong, 7th June, 1901.
The present severe epidemic of Bubonic Plague, which seems now to have become an annual visitation, presents so serious a menace to the general prosperity of this port and Colony, that in the interest of trade my Committee deem it their duty to make such representations to the Government as they trust may lead to the adoption of every measure practicable calculated to limit the spread of this disease.
I am therefore directed to point out that although it is now seven years since the disease first appeared in a fatally epidemic form, and notwithstanding all...
11