ichertelt
No.223
Hongkong.
losure!.
gir,
123
[AG 03 MAY 03,
Government House,
Hongkong, 24th. April, 1903.
I have the honour to request your authority
to reserve the portion of Taipingshan remaining unbuilt upon,
as an open space, to be converted into a Public Garden adjoin-
ing the most densely crowded portion of the City.
2.
I regret to say that so far I cannot say
that results have shown the efficacy of the unremitting efforts
of the past four years to combat the annually recurring
epidemic of plague. Those efforts were redoubled last year
and I have no reason to doubt the thoroughness with which the
large Sanitary Staff have preformed their duties, yet the
number of cases reported to this date is 329 as against 19
last year.
3.
In all these matters we are evidently
groping in the dark to a large extent and Medical Science
does not appear to have determined accurately the causes of
its origin or the means of its cure; the cases sent to the
Plague Hospital show an appalling mortality that I cannot
help feeling is due in many cases to the conviction among the
Chinese that to go to the Plague Hospital is to be carried to
the grave, with the result that patients sent there enter its
doors already moribund with despair.
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P.,
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
&C. *
800.
&C...
4.