No. 357...
Hongkong
Enclosure 1.
(Book Post)
Government House,
5745
607
* 2 NO. J
Hongkong, 30th September, 1904,
Sir,
I have the honour to transmit under separate cover six copies of a paper by Dr. W. Hunter, the Government Bacteriologist, entitled 'A Research into Epidemic and Epizootic Plague' with a preface written by Dr. J. M. Atkinson, Principal Civil Medical Officer.
2. The Report, though ill-arranged, is a valuable one containing much original matter.
3. The most important points it brings out are that men are most easily infected through the food assimilating parts of the body; that inferior qualities of rice, such as form the staple food of the coolie or pauper class of Chinese who supply the large number of cases during an epidemic, have been found to contain plague bacilli in considerable numbers; and that food can be infected by direct contact with any plague-infected material or by flies, cockroaches, etc., which have been in contact with such material and carry plague bacilli on their body surfaces to food or to the utensils in which food is prepared.
4. The report tends to correct previous over-estimates
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
ALFRED LYTTELTON, K.C., M.P.,
Ecc
800.+