Hong Kong Annual Administration Reports, 1841-1941 REPORTS EXHIBITING THE PAST AND PRESENT.
The science of chemistry has revealed to us the beautiful and dependent link that unites the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Obedience to the reciprocating laws of animal and vegetable life involves no abstruse submission to chemical science; it is effected in the exercise of our refinements. Every man who plants and nurtures a tree or shrub, nurtures his own existence; he is unconsciously acting in obedience to the sanitary laws of nature: he is, in the exercise of a simple and refined pleasure, creating a safe vent for the noxious residue of his own respiration, and the source of a life-invigorating gas. It is much to be regretted that the Government, in apportioning the building sites in Victoria, did not encourage and enforce the formation of gardens. There are many waste slopes and corners lying contiguous to buildings which have been expensive in their construction, that it would be well to plant and adorn, rather than to sell them for purposes which may render the neighbouring houses uninhabitable.
When an epidemic occurs, we are too apt to look for the source of it on the spot where the disease has reigned and there to apply our remedies. We overlook the fact that it may have originated from general and distant causes. It may be asserted as an axiom that the habits and houses of the poor are generally the sources of malaria. If this be true of any community, it is so of the humbler and native community of Hong Kong. In the quarters of their abodes, the houses are small, ill-ventilated, undrained, and thickly congregated. They are deficient in all the appliances of cleanliness. The social habits of the people, which it is difficult to control, add intensity to the external evils of their position. Though they had the Cloaca of Rome to receive their filth, they would retain more than they reject. They, however, use water freely, and were the localities of their abode efficiently drained, this indiscriminate habit would be in many respects a safeguard. Fresh water, however, although abundant in the island, is a scarce and expensive luxury with the people. It is brought from a distance, and in dry weather obtained with difficulty, at an undue expense either of money or labour, and, I regret to add, from objectionable sources, such as the public drains, or stagnant receptacles of rain water. A few public wells or fountains would be easily constructed, and tend greatly to the comfort, cleanliness, and salubrity of the city.
The large drains which convey the torrents from the mountains to the sea, and serve also for reservoirs of filth, are open in the upper parts of the city. In consequence of their excessive declivity, the air, at a short distance from these openings, becomes so foul that it will not support combustion, an evidence of its deleterious qualities. As these drains empty themselves into the sea below high-water mark, the tide rises into them, and forces the foul air through the upper openings. Every person who lives in the vicinity of these vents can testify to the practical truth of this assertion, from the disgusting odours which emanate at different periods of the day from the drains. The surrounding air thus becomes contaminated, and requires only the synthetical agency of electricity to elaborate it into a wide-spreading and deadly poison. This evil can be remedied by covering the drains beyond the sphere of habitation. It is a misfortune beyond the reach of any practical remedy, that the drains empty themselves into the "slack water" of a tidal basin, by which their refuse is slowly and imperfectly carried away.
The topography of Victoria affords no greater sources of malaria than those which ought to be the fountains of health—the public markets. They are wanting in every conceivable requisite of fitness, position, cleanliness, construction, and internal regulation and discipline. The climate especially demands the reverse of all this. I observed early one morning, in one of the markets, persons in an advanced stage of disease lying over the principal butcher's stall. No consideration of "vested rights," or of those hundred other personal objections to public improvements, should retain the present markets a day beyond the powers of the promptest decision and action. The recent multiplication of markets has been a multiplication of evils. They are the centres of filth and its congenial companion vice.
It has been shown that the various and too common forms of venereal disease are peculiar. They are indeed too often the foundation of the worst diseases of the colony. Their social influence is obviously most hurtful and it is most worthy of consideration whether some public remedial measures and system of inspection could not be devised to mitigate the evil.
Lastly, it may be remarked that the experience of every year, and the truths which accumulated facts elicit, convince me that the sanitary peculiarities of the climate of Hong Kong have been misunderstood, and its evils excessively exaggerated, and that the latter are not entirely beyond the reach of a remedy.
March 25, 1850.
(True Copy.)
(Signed) WILLIAM MORRISON,
Colonial Surgeon.
(Signed),
W. CAINE,
Colonial Secretary:
SIR,
Enclosure 9 in No. 15.
Report on the Three Chinese Schools receiving Government Aid.
Victoria, Hong Kong, March 8, 1850.
In reply to your letter of this date, requesting to be furnished with a report for the last year of the three Chinese schools receiving Government assistance, we have the honour to say:
The schools have been visited as heretofore; that at Victoria, regularly, the others as opportunity offered.
Page 155
Page 156