Hong Kong Annual Administration Reports, 1841-1941
COLONIAL REPORTS.
-ANNUAL.
consequences of such exposure to the wretched sufferer. Never was Chinese ingenuity put to so sore a test, or exercised in such a pitiable cause.
Concealment being at length rendered practically impossible by the vigilance of the search parties, who profited by the above experiences, popular feeling among the Chinese gradually intensified and eventually found expression in mischievous stories attributing every imaginable act of cruelty to the foreign doctors, which were made current by means of offensive placards posted freely in the Chinese quarter of the Colony and in the city of Canton, and in the latter place the popular indignation at the alleged sufferings of the Chinese in Hong Kong ran so high as to seriously menace the safety of the European residents in the foreign settlement.
In this state of affairs every effort was made to pacify and reassure the minds of the Chinese as to the good intentions of the Government and its medical officers towards the sick. Notices were issued by the Government and by the Chinese directors of the Tung Wa Hospital urging the people to place no credence in the idle rumours that were being circulated by mischievous persons, and a similar course was followed by the Chinese authorities in Canton at the instance of Her Majesty's Consul at that port. Notwithstanding, however, these contradictions and efforts at persuasion, the native mind refused to be disabused of the blind prejudice that possessed it, and further rumours of the gradual spread of anti-foreign feeling in Canton and of a contemplated attack upon the foreign community at that port led to a Concession being made which, however undesirable it may have been from a purely medical point of view, was fully justified by the urgency of the occasion and by circumstances generally. I allude to the establishment of a temporary plague hospital under the management of Chinese doctors belonging to the staff of the Tung Wa native hospital, but under the supervision of the Government medical staff, the concession being dependent on this latter condition.
The Chinese hospital was established towards the end of May, and thither many of the patients in the Government hospitals were transferred at their own request. The Chinese sick had now the choice of European or native treatment, and although many elected in favour of the former, the vast majority preferred to be attended by their own countrymen.
At this period, notwithstanding the efforts of the cleansing parties and the other sanitary measures that were being taken to stay the progress of the epidemic, the number of cases reported was daily increasing—a state of things in some measure due perhaps to the fact that since the establishment of the Chinese hospital fewer cases were concealed, and to increased vigilance on the part of the searching parties, but pointing unmistakably to a general increase of the epidemic. The number of fresh cases rose with alarming rapidity during the month of June from between 20 and 30 daily to 60 and 70, and even to 80 and 90 towards the
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