COLONIAL REPORTS.-ANNUAL.
129
7
1887-1903
... latter end of the month, and on one occasion the official returns for the previous 24 hours recorded the terrible total of 109, including dead bodies picked up in the streets.
The Executive Committee of the Sanitary Board had not been slow to see that the staff engaged in sanitary operations was inadequate to cope with the progress of the disease, that they were, so to speak, still behind the epidemic, and that an increased staff was necessary to enable them to overtake it. The staff accordingly received a reinforcement of some 150 more volunteers from the garrison, and the work of cleansing and disinfecting, which in the earlier days of the epidemic had been confined to houses in which cases of plague had occurred, was now extended to all houses which were reported to be in an insanitary condition. The committee further took the precaution of closing a number of unhealthy habitations and of walling-in several streets in the infected district. These and other sanitary measures produced in due course the desired result, and by the middle of July there was a perceptible decrease in the epidemic. The disease further decreased during the latter half of that month and during the succeeding month of August, until it gradually disappeared in the early days of September, leaving the Colony the ghastly legacy of a death-roll extending to some 2,550 names, including that of the much-lamented Captain Vesey of the Shropshire Light Infantry, who, as a volunteer in command of one of the cleansing parties, nobly sacrificed his life in the interests of the Colony.
The above figures represent, of course, only the number of deaths from the disease that occurred in the Colony. It is impossible to say how many persons who fled to their native places only to fall victims there contracted the disease in Hong Kong, but their number must have been very large.
One or two further incidents in connection with the epidemic, which added to the troubles and difficulties of the Government, may be conveniently recorded here. I have already alluded to the hostile attitude of the Chinese towards the European doctors - an attitude doubtless due to the horror which they have of surgical operations, based on their belief that there is no place in the next world for mutilated bodies, or at least that they must ever remain so mutilated. I have also referred to the beneficial effect produced by the establishment of a Chinese hospital, where patients received Chinese treatment. This effect was unfortunately but short-lived. As the disease progressed, and the number of deaths increased, a further grievance was urged by the native population in connection with the burial of the dead. With the large daily mortality at the height of the epidemic, it was no longer possible to give the same care to each individual grave, and the burying parties had to dispose of the dead by burying the coffins in trenches, with the result that in some cases the friends and relatives were unable to trace at once the graves of their own dead. This was a great shock to the feelings of a people whose chief form of religion consists in the rites and ceremonies of burial, and in the annual worship of the dead, and
129
7
1887-1903
COLONIAL REPORTS.- -ANNUAL.
latter end of the month, and on one occasion the official returns for the previous 24 hours recorded the terrible total of 109, including dead bodies picked up in the streets.
The Executive Committee of the Sanitary Board had not been slow to see that the staff engaged in sanitary operations was in- adequate to cope with the progress of the disease, that they were, so to speak, still behind the epidemic, and that an increased staff was necessary to enable them to overtake it. The staff accordingly received a reinforcement of some 150 more volunteers from the garrison, and the work of cleansing and disinfecting, which in the earlier days of the epidemic had been confined to houses in which cases of plague had occurred was now extended to all houses which were reported to be in an insanitary condition. The committee further took the precaution of closing a number of unhealthy habitations and of walling-in several streets in the infected district. These and other sanitary measures produced in due course the desired result, and by the middle of July there was a perceptible decrease in the epidemic. The disease further decreased during the latter half of that month and during the succeeding month of August, until it gradually disappeared in the early days of September, leaving the Colony the ghastly legacy of a death-roll extending to some 2,550 names, including that of the much-lamented Captain Vesey of the Shropshire Light Infantry who, as a volun- teer in command of one of the cleansing parties, nobly sacrificed his life in the interests of the Colony.
The above figures represent, of course, only the number of deaths from the disease that occurred in the Colony. It is impossible to say how many persons who fled to their native places only to fall victims there contracted the disease in Hong Kong, but their number must have been very large.
One or two further incidents in connection with the epidemic, which added to the troubles and difficulties of the Government, may be conveniently recorded here. I have already alluded to the hostile attitude of the Chinese towards the European doctors -an attitude doubtless due to the horror which they have of surgical operations, based on their belief that there is no place in the next world for mutilated bodies, or at least that they must ever remain so mutilated. I have also referred to the beneficial effect produced by the establishment of a Chinese hospital, where patients received Chinese treatment. This effect was unfortunately but short-lived. As the disease progressed, and the number of deaths increased, a further grievance was urged by the native population in connection with the burial of the dead. With the large daily mortality at the height of the epidemic, it was no longer possible to give the same care to each individual grave, and the burying parties had to dispose of the dead by burying the coffins in trenches, with the result that in some cases the friends and relatives were unable to trace at once the graves of their own dead. This was a great shock to the feelings of a people whose chief form of religion consists in the rites and ceremonies of burial, and in the annual worship of the dead, and
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