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Full use was made of the twenty-four beds reserved for male cases of venereal disease at the old Government Civil Hospital and provision was made for the in-patient treatment of men, women and children suffering from venereal disease in the Queen Mary Hospital.
Some 13,055 injections of organic arsenic and 962 injections of bismuth preparations were given to out-patients.
The Health Officer, Social Hygiene, and his assistants examined 4,923 smears for gonococci and took 11,748 specimens of blood for the Wassermann test.
7.-Infant Welfare Centres.
These have been fully described in Section V, Maternity and Child Welfare, in this Report.
8.-Dispensaries in the New Territories.
Before detailing the position and activities of the medical services available in the New Territories, it might be profitable to give some information of a general nature concerning this area.
The New Territories include about three hundred square miles of mainland between Kowloon and the Sham Chun River and a number of islands, the largest of which is Lantau. This area was leased by Great Britain for a period of ninety-nine years from 1898 from the Government of China. The territory lies outside the Urban Council Area and as yet possesses but a skeleton medical and health organisation.
The Public Health (Sanitation) Ordinance has not been applied to the New Territories, and the Labour Code introduced towards the end of 1937 can only be regarded as a gesture in the right direction.
The bulk of the community live under rural or semi-rural conditions not unlike those prevailing in South China as a whole. There are, in addition, three main concentrations of population at Taipo and Un Long on the mainland and at Cheung Chau, an island. Organised markets and a small number of scavengers are to be found in these three townships, but elsewhere environmental hygiene is practically unorganised and in the care of "village elders".
For medical purposes the New Territories are divided into Eastern and Western Districts, the range of hills running more or less north-south serving as a geographical boundary.