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house cleansing and disinfection throughout No. 9 Health District in which the outbreak was most severe, and (4) the disinfection of all the public latrines by means of Chloride of Lime. The work was, however, greatly hampered by the inability of the Police to render any assistance this year, as they had done in foriner epidemics, and the impossibility of obtaining reliable assistance from other quarters. In addition to the above measures an attempt was made to reduce the number of rats in the city by employing Chinese and furnishing them with traps and bait, but only some 1,000 rats were destroyed in this manner.
In Appendix B will be found the addresses of all cases found in domestic buildings; the total number of such buildings was as follows :--
In the City of Victoria,.
In British Kowloon,
....709
66
775
Eighty of the above named 709 houses in the city had cases of Bubonic Fever in 1898 and 2 of Je Kowloon houses had also been infected the previous year. The total number of houses in which more than one case occurred was 117, and a list of these houses is given in the same appendix.
The following table gives the number of cases and deaths which have occurred each year since. the outbreak of the disease:-
1894. 1895.
1896. 1897. 1898. 1899.
Chinese,
fcases,
2,619
43
1,157
21
1,244
1,455
deaths,
2,447
36
1,047
19
1,126
1,407
European,
{
11
16
26
7
cases,.
deaths,
GN
2
8
11
49
O
31
50
24
Other Non-Chinese,
cases,. deaths,
36
23
38
17
Totals, deaths,
{
cases,
2,679 2,485
45
1,204
21
| 1,320
1,486
36
1,078
19
1,175
1.428
The figures for 1894 do not include a large number of dead Chinese bodies found in the streets. and taken direct to the Cemetery. It is unknown how many of these had died of Bubonic Fever.
SMALL-POX.
This disease was more or less in evidence throughout the year, although only 69 cases were. reported, as compared with 199 cases during the previous year. The number of deaths from Small- pox was 35, three of which were among the Non-Chinese community-one in the British Navy, one in the Mercantile Marine, and one in the Civil Community. The nationalities of the patients were as follows:- Chinese 43, European (including Portuguese) 17, Filipino 6, Indian 3. Three cases oc- curred on board H.M.S. Undaunted, the infection having been contracted at Wei-hai-wei. No cases occurred among the troops stationed here, and it would appear, from the statistics of recent years, that they are better protected by vaccination than are the blue-jackets.
In 1897 I recommended that a small bonus should be offered to the Chinese House Surgeons at the Native Hospitals (Tung-Wah, Alice Memorial and Nethersole) for all successful vaccinatious, the vaccine to be supplied free by the Government, with a view to increasing the number of vaccinated persons in the Colony and thereby reducing the mortality from this disease. The scheme was specially recommended by the Sanitary Board, by resolution in August, 1898, but has, I regret to say, not yet been given effect to.
The total number of vaccinations recorded last year was 6,529 as compared with 7,051 during 1898, being a decrcase of 522. This can hardly be regarded as satisfactory, in view of the fact that there has been an increase of nearly 5,000 to the population.
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