[
    {
        "id": 207309,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1975",
        "page_number": 77,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "THE GREAT PLAGUE OF HONG KONG\n\n69\n\nthat \"Simond...... has given a great deal of attention to this subject (and) came to the conclusion that Indian rat fleas bite man and that rat fleas spread plague from one rat to another and also to the human species.\"* However, Hunter himself was not convinced of this theory and subscribed to the view that cockroaches picked up the bacillus and transferred the disease to food stuffs. Others shared his scepticism.\n\nFinally, studies undertaken in 1905-06 by the Indian Plague Commission in Bombay conclusively established that fleas were the principal agents of transmission. Of the 1500 species of fleas about 100 can transmit plague; the most widely disseminated is Xenopsylla cheopis which is equally at home on rats or homo sapiens. At one feeding on a rat, the blood of which contains 100 million organisms per millilitre, a flea will ingest about 5000 organisms which then multiply in the flea's digestive tract. Later, its proventriculus becomes plugged by gelatinous masses of bacilli and, as a result, the valvular action becomes impaired. Because of this obstruction, blood cannot be sucked into the stomach. The esophagus becomes distended and the elastic recoil of the walls of both pharynx and gullet when the flea stops sucking may drive back into the bite wound highly infective blood. An infected flea may regurgitate as many as 10,000 to 24,000 organisms at one biting. Many species of fleas, however, may become infected without incurring blockages and these may never become pestiferous unless they have fed on severely infected rodents.\n\nOnce a rat has become infected and subsequently dies the fleas carried thereon migrate to another host when the corpse loses its body heat. When the rat population has become decimated the fleas transfer their attention to human beings. This sequence of events thus explains the commonly observed phenomenon that plague in rats precedes plague among the inhabitants of infected premises.\n\nEven though the discovery of how plague was transferred from rats to man enabled more effective preventive measures to be taken to eradicate the disease in Hong Kong, it continued to afflict the colony until as late as 1929 when two cases were recorded. Virulent\n\n*W. Hunter, A Research into Epidemic and Epizootic Plague, Hong Kong, 1904, p. 32.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207893,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1976",
        "page_number": 281,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "266\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\ncommunity. They resisted being sent to the temporary plague hospitals set up under the direction of European doctors. They feared that the bodies of dead relatives and friends would not be treated according to Chinese custom. The mood of the Chinese population became so hostile, almost breaking into open rebellion, that the Government finally permitted the Directors of Tung Wah Hospital to open a plague hospital in a recently built and as yet unoccupied pig and sheep depot in Kennedy Town. The attempt to force western medical treatment upon a Chinese population already aroused by the natural fear of the plague, further alienated the general population from any suggestion that western methods should be introduced into Tung Wah. The President of the Directors in that year was in the unenviable position of being also a member of the Sanitary Board whose duties it was to initiate and enforce measures to control the plague. His position with a foot in two camps provoked an attack upon his business premises while he was chairing a meeting at Tung Wah called to consider the protests of the Chinese community against the measures of the Government. Upon receiving the news of the attack, he hurriedly left the meeting, but his chair was no more outside the gates of the hospital than the hostile crowd which had gathered began stoning the chair bearers and rushed the chair turning it upside down with the unfortunate Chairman inside. He managed to crawl out and rush back within the safety of the Tung Wah gates. An Indian constable blew his whistle and a group of watchmen of the Hospital rushed out and the crowd dispersed. The incident reflects the strong feeling surging in the Chinese community against the measures taken by the Government in the plague crisis.\n\nThe Governor was not only recipient of hostility from the Chinese community but was also strongly criticised in the English press for the slowness with which Government undertook plague measures and for making concessions to the feelings of the Chinese regarding the treatment and care of plague victims. He may have been stung by these criticisms, for after the passing of the plague he took a very strong stand in demands made on Tung Wah to change its former policy of exclusive employment of doctors trained in traditional Chinese medicine.\n\nIn 1895 a Commission was appointed to inquire into whether the Hospital should be closed, or, if continued, what changes should be made. There was no question in official minds that it could",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    }
]