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Extract from the Hong Kong Telegraph dated foth, August 1908.
they knew, in the coolie premises of the Godown Company at Kowloon, if they could persuade Jardine's to establish something of the sort at East Point, and very probably the Dock Com- pany and other large employers of labour, it might do something to attain the object in view. As it was the intention of the Govern- ment, Dr. Atkinson took it, to build permanent bath-houses all over the Colony, the tanks might be introduced in connection with these bath-houses. Regarding the cost of the under- taking, the monthly upkeep of the tanks used" on the experimental block in the west end for three months was $320 and the inital cost practically $2,000, and he estimated that the cost of establishing tanks all over the Colony would be something like $54,000 and the monthly upkeep $9,000. Although cleanliness was a virtue to be encouraged, personally the speaker thought that disinfection was a more important thing in dealing with plague, and he also thought it did not necessarily follow that because bugs were found in a plague house they disseminated the disease; naturally, if a bug bit a man suffering from the disease, the insect would be expected to become infected. It was not, however, the ques- tion whether the bug carried the disease from the end of one epidemic to the com- mencement of another; he was much in- terested in His Excellency's experiment and its results, Dr. Atkinson concluded, and he was sure the Sanitary Board would do all it could to further his wishes in the matter.
His Excellency said he did not claim any originality for the idea regarding tanks; he took that idea from an examination of tanks in use by the Godown Company in Kowloon. They were all aware that there was hardly a large hong in the Colony that had not had its business interrupted by the loss of coolies from plague. Two years ago the Godown Company established these tanks, and they had not lost
a man since. The experiment having already been made by the Godowa Company, His Ex- cellency trusted that the influence brought to bear upon other large hongs by the Sanitary Board would induce them to follow the ad- mirable example set by the Godown Company in Kowloon.
This was all the business, and the meeting concluded.
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