CO129-346 - Governor Sir Lugard - 1908 [1-3] — Page 391

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The table "hows roughly that one adult male has 'iad of heri- -herl out of every six examined and one adult female out of every nineteen. Of persons between the twelth month and the

end of the fifteenth year one out of every fifty six has died of heriberi. It is difficult to make this age and sex

incidence fit in with any rice theory which shall account for anything like a major proportion of cases of heriheri occuring ir Forgkong.

The special incidence of heriberi on adult males in

Hongkong is more like that of suchdiseases as syphilis or

gonorrhoea than that of a disease affecting the food supply.

There is a disease which to the Chinese mind is a special

entity, I mean gup sik, it is said to be caught during sexual

Intercourse to appear after a varying incubation period,'

to

run a short course and high mortality and he chiefly char-

-acterised by thoracic embrassment ard by cyanosis of the hands

and face at death. When sent to the Mortuary it is found to

he heriberi and sometimes prevmonia or pleurisy.

The nomerclature of disease has often passed from a homopen-

-eous to a heterogenous state with increase of knowledge,

we have but to look from abdominal typhus to the divisions

of the paratyphoifs,Already there are very good re-sons

to suppose that some epidemies of ship heriberi,particularly

those of Norwegian sailing ships, are a Aifferent disesse

than tropical heriberi,We have not yet sufficient evidence

to enable us to split up tropic 1 heriberi into a grain

intoxication and a contagious disease but I submit that many