M 55
The Public Health and Buildings Ordinance became law on the 21st February 1903 but its effect was not immediate, indeed there was a marked tendency to have plans approved and buildings begun under the old Ordinance during 1902 to avoid the restrictions about to be introduced by the new law.
It is therefore fair to include the plague figures of 1903 as being conditioned by pre-existing regulations and if this be done it will appear that during the ten years of the old regime there were recorded 13,800 cases of plague while during the eighteen years 1904 to 1921 inclusive there were 9,067 cases.
The new law however has failed to produce a satisfactory type of Chinese house. Certainly the new houses are better provided with open spaces at their backs, they have better lighting and ventilation chiefly manifest when they are empty, but they are still narrow long tunnels. The Chinese family of the artisan class is too poor to rent a whole floor of an area of 500 to 600 square feet. He will have privacy and so he rents a small portion of a floor and builds thereon a cubicle of an area of about 60 to 70 square feet. (The law requires that no cubicle shall have a less area than 64 square feet).
The cubicle partitions act as baffle plates preventing free circulation of air. They also darken the cubicles and herein lies their danger.
The natural preventive agencies against Tuberculosis are not given fair play.
From the abstracts of the annual summary prepared by the Registrar of Births and Deaths the following figures are taken and show (1) the number of deaths recorded as due to general Tuberculosis, Phthisis and Pulmonary Tuberculosis, and (2) the percentage of deaths due to Tubercular infection of the total deaths registered during each year from 1912 to 1921 inclusive.
Year General Tuberculosis Pulmonary Tuberculosis and Phthisis Percentage of deaths from Tuberculosis of Total deaths 1912 1,086 12.1 1913 1,462 15.5 1914 1,013 11.3 1915 1,003 14.4 1916 1,522 14.8 1917 1,271 14.3 1918 1,504 12.2 1919 1,609 14.05 1920 1,779 16.7 1921 1,637 15.9The original text has been reformatted into HTML using <p> for paragraphs. The table has been reconstructed using proper table syntax. Spelling errors have been corrected (e.g., "ventila- tion" to "ventilation"), and spacing issues have been addressed. The original content and word count have been preserved.