M 22
Plague.
The incidence of this disease during 1915 was very slight there being only 144 cases as compared with 2,146 cases in 1914, 408 cases in 1913, and 1,847 cases in 1912.
All the cases were Chinese. 140 died giving a mortality rate of 97.2 per cent.
Seven of these cases were imported.
During the year 94,093 rats were caught or found dead in the City of Victoria and adjoining villages and 15,816 in Kowloon, a total of 109,909 as compared with 101,658 in 1914.
In the City 22 of these rats were found to be plague-infected i.e., 0.023 per cent.
In Kowloon 76 of the rats were found plague-infected, giving a percentage of 0.48.
Table III shows the monthly distribution of the plague-infected rats during the year.
Typhoid Fever.
The number of cases of this disease notified during the year was 198 as compared with 140 in 1914 and 201 in 1913. Thirty of these cases were imported.
The cases of European or American nationality were 36 (38 in 1914), Chinese 128, Portuguese 7, Japanese 13, Indian 12, and other Asiatics 2.
It has not been possible to definitely trace the source of infection in these cases nor the direct infection of one case from another.
The incidence of the disease has not been of the nature of a water-borne or milk-borne epidemic, but the disease may have been acquired by the eating of raw vegetables, grown by Chinese methods of manuring the plants, by eating uncooked shell fish such as oysters, and also by the contamination of food in houses by flies which have previously settled on excrement in the dry privies found in the yards of most houses.
Paratyphoid Fever.
This disease was first made notifiable in this Colony at the end of 1913, and during 1915 three cases were reported.
Two were European and one an American case. Two cases were imported and one died.