CO129-280 - Public Offices & Others - 1897 — Page 228

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SIR,

THE CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACTS, 23 SEP

--

HONGKONG. ̄

PRINTED FOR PAR!}

be 9523 October 1899

T CHINA ASSOCIATION,

PRINTED

FOR

USE OF

CASTERN

COLONY

159, Cannon Street,

30th August, 1897.

In pursuance of my letter of the 31st May, I have the honour, now, to submit for your consideration letters from the Hongkong branch of this Association, representing the urgent necessity of reviving regulations for the control of con- tagious disease.

The Reports and Statistics which the Hongkong Committee adduce in support of their case exhibit in striking contrast the persistent improvement in the sanitary conditions which followed the enactment of such Regulations in 1858, and the immediate revulsion and deterioration which ensued upon their rescission. Previous to 1858 Hongkong was proverbial for an aggravated form of venereal disease. The enactment of what are known as the Contagious Diseases Ordinances in that year produced a steady decrease in the number of cases and virulence of the disease till the position was reversed, and the Colony became noted throughout the Services as one of the healthiest, in this respect, in the Empire.

The repeal of similar legislation in India was followed by repeal, in 1887, in opposition to strongly expressed official and public opinion, in the Straits Settle- ments and Hougkong-with the result that the ratio of admissions, which had sunk to 156 per 1,000 in 1886, rose to 359 in 1896, and actually half the garrison (43.29 per 1,000) were admitted to hospital in the first four months of the current year. It is, perhaps, even more significant of the deplorable consequences which the repeal of the Acts has entailed, that the cases of secondary syphilis, which had sunk to 88 per 1,000 in 1886 reached 106 per 1,000 in 1896, and figure at 101 per 1,000 in the first quarter of '97. The ratio of admissions to hospital, the ratio of constantly sick, and the virulence of type have, in fact, gone on augmenting till the conditions are, now, scarcely less evil than in the days when the Colony was a by-word.

Stress has been laid on the health of the garrison because the effects are more directly evident, and statistics more precise, in the case of men who are con- tinuously ashore; but the testimony of Naval Reports is no less convincing. The evidence of Dr. Pottinger,who remembers the prevalence and virulence of the disease in 1851, but finds syphilis had all but disappeared from the Colony in 1870-and the Report on the Health of the Navy for 1891-which emphasises the renewed prevalence and bad type and the "amount of injury done more especially by syphilis since the Contagious Diseases Acts were abolished which, if something be not done to minimise the evil, will seriously impair the efficiency of the service, and do incalculable injury to innocent wives and children" -may be quoted as summing up the case.

*

湫 *

and

It is hardly necessary to remark that the mercantile marine and the civil popu- lation suffer also from the state of things disclosed. Such cases cannot be tabulated, nor their history followed, with the same precision as in the case of the

* V. p. 7 of annexed Correspondence.

The Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, M.P.,

H.M.'s Secretary of State for the Colonies.

+ p. 8 ditto.

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