Sessional_Paper_1902 — Page 517

HONGKONG.

No. 15

PRELIMINARY MEMORANDA ON PLAGUE PREVENTION IN HONGKONG.

1902

Laid before the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Officer Administering the Government.

. SIR,

FIRST MEMORANDUM.

SANITARY BOARD OFFICE, 20th January, 1902.

As requested by His Excellency I have the honour to furnish him with a brief memorandum on the measures which it is advisable to take in order to combat the annual and seasonal recurrence of plague. Two deaths have been already reported from this disease within the past fortnight, and it is important from a preventive point of view that vigorous action be promptly taken.

2. No success is likely to accrue from the adoption of any measures limited to dealing with plague in human beings and which does not take cognizance of the fact, that plague in rats and mice also disseminate the infection.

It does not serve any very useful purpose to remove the sick and cleanse everything in the infected houses and above ground if the infection is being also carried by plague stricken rats from house to house or district to district by the subterranean movements of rats, whether this be effected by rat burrows or by sewers and drains. Both rat and human plague possess infective powers and each can spread the disease not only to its own species but also to the other.

3. Plague is, in fact, primarily a disease among rats, the infection of which can be conveyed to human beings, but once established in human beings the infection is communicable to others by means of the expectoration, by the discharges from the bowels, and by the urine and by discharges from the buboes or glandular swellings which form in this disease. The clothes, the food and surroundings of a plague patient are likely to be infective and spread the disease to others, while the rats in the house which were previously healthy, by eating the food or coming in contact with the clothes or discharges catch the infection and also spread the disease. Ac- cordingly no measures are complete which do not include the prevention of the disease in rats as well as in man. It is because of this intimate connection between rat plague and human plague that the following measures are advised.

4. To begin with the preventive measures against rat infection, it is absolutely essential to know in what houses, areas and quarters of the town the rats are infected with plague. To obtain this intelligence I would advise the appointment of two or three trained medical officers to bacteriologically examine daily the rats which are found dead by the rat-catchers and any that are alive which may appear to be ill. Large numbers of rats do not become infected all at once, but the infection, as in human beings, gradually spreads from one to another until plague among them becomes epidemic. Once the disease acquires a firm hold on the rats the danger to a locality is very great. I think it might be possible to obtain the loan from the Indian Government of some Assistant Surgeons specially trained in plague bacterio- logical work. The rat-catchers also should be at least doubled in number. The disease among rats could then be localised and the information obtained would cor-

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