K 12
Of the total cases only 3 were returned as Pneumonic Plague.
The distribution of the disease over the different months of the year is shown together with that of other notifiable diseases in a table on page 11 as also its distribution according to locality (page 10).
The special staff of rat-catchers was abolished at the end of January, 1908, as it had been found that the co-operation of the Chinese could not be thereby obtained and it was not till near the end of the epidemic that a substitute scheme was adopted by which some 2,000 traps were distributed to the Chinese and several hundred special rat-bins put up throughout the City and Kowloon for the reception of rats caught by the people.
The rats are collected daily from these bins and sent for examination and if any are infected, the locality they come from is known though not the individual house. This enables the Sanitary Department to watch for warnings of Plague in the different localities and if necessary to adopt special measures.
The reports of the Indian Plague Commission have been duly followed with the result that former measures of disinfection of houses with disinfectants of the coal tar derivative series have given place to special washing of houses with a flea-killing mixture of water and an emulsion of kerosene oil with soap. Late in the year a large quantity of rat poison was obtained from India and it was decided to endeavour to keep down the numbers of rats about houses by laying down a very large number of poison baits at one time and to continue to systematically lay down poison throughout the City and Kowloon.
This wholesale laying down of poison did not begin until the last few days of 1908, but has so far given encouraging results in increasing the daily destruction of rats.
Cholera.
The cases of this disease recorded during the year numbered 56. One of these was a European, one a Japanese and one an Indian. The rest were Chinese. The Japanese case and all the Chinese cases died. Nine cases were imported, six in one ship.
No spread of infection was traced to these nine imported cases. After the great floods which occurred during 1908 in the neighbourhood of Canton, Cholera was more or less prevalent there, and it is very probable that in the cases, which could not be definitely considered as having been imported into the Colony, the infection was due to the arrival in the Colony of a person or persons from the neighbourhood of Canton infected—possibly so mildly as to escape detection—with the disease.
The six cases imported from one ship occurred in the last week of March, and the next case recorded was not till the 19th of June and occurred in a prisoner who had been 3 months in Victoria Gaol. Four new cases occurred in the Gaol on the following four days.
No Cholera was known to be occurring in the Colony outside the Gaol at this time or since the six cases imported three months previously, but shortly afterwards cases began to crop up in the City and continued through July, August and September.
An enquiry into the outbreak of Cholera in the Gaol formed the subject of a special report by the Medical Officer of the Gaol and the Medical Officer of Health and the conclusion arrived at was that in all probability the infection had been brought in by a short sentence prisoner suffering from a very mild infection of the disease.
Typhoid Fever.
The number of cases of this disease in 1908 was 38 as compared with 73 during 1907 and 66 in 1906. Ten of these cases were imported.
The European cases numbered 26, the Chinese 7 (one Eurasian included), and 5 cases occurred among the other Non-Chinese races. Four Europeans died and all the Chinese. The European case mortality was therefore 15.3 per cent.
The source of infection of this disease and one which is always present is most probably, in the majority of cases, in native grown vegetables which are manured with diluted human excreta. Raw vegetables, salads, etc., from Chinese sources should therefore never be eaten. Oysters also should be looked upon with suspicion and not eaten raw.
Small-pox.
The number of cases of Small-pox during 1908 was 472 as compared with 341 in 1907. An Epidemic may be said to have started in December, 1907, with six cases during the month, and it extended to July 15th, 1908, since when no further case was recorded.