334
:
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The table "hows roughly that one adult male has 'iad of heri- -herl out of every six examined and one adult female out of every nineteen. Of persons between the twelth month and the
end of the fifteenth year one out of every fifty six has died of heriberi. It is difficult to make this age and sex
incidence fit in with any rice theory which shall account for anything like a major proportion of cases of heriheri occuring ir Forgkong.
The special incidence of heriberi on adult males in
Hongkong is more like that of suchdiseases as syphilis or
gonorrhoea than that of a disease affecting the food supply.
There is a disease which to the Chinese mind is a special
entity, I mean gup sik, it is said to be caught during sexual
Intercourse to appear after a varying incubation period,'
to
run a short course and high mortality and he chiefly char-
-acterised by thoracic embrassment ard by cyanosis of the hands
and face at death. When sent to the Mortuary it is found to
he heriberi and sometimes prevmonia or pleurisy.
The nomerclature of disease has often passed from a homopen-
-eous to a heterogenous state with increase of knowledge,
we have but to look from abdominal typhus to the divisions
of the paratyphoifs,Already there are very good re-sons
to suppose that some epidemies of ship heriberi,particularly
those of Norwegian sailing ships, are a Aifferent disesse
than tropical heriberi,We have not yet sufficient evidence
to enable us to split up tropic 1 heriberi into a grain
intoxication and a contagious disease but I submit that many