A CURE FOR THE PLAGUE.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
THE OPENING OF THE WEST KIVER.
In another column we publish an interesting communication from the Right Rev. Bishop CHAUSSE, of Canton, narrating a cure of
on that score.
The
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[July 2, 1896 the river as far up as Posé would be s an in mense advantage to British trade and that it should include the cities of Shuihing Wuchow, Nanning, and Posé, the latter being practically the head of the navigation
LI HUNG-CHANG AND THE RELATIONS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND CHINA.
The interviewers would appear to have been trying their hand with Li Hung- CHANG while in Germany, and the wily veteran has evidently been fencing their questions, judging from the messages recently received through Reuter. If it be correct, however, that LI "denies the existence of a
Appended to the minutes of the last plague effected by Dr. YERSIN by means of monthly meeting of the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce will be found an a hypodermic injection of a liquid which we instructive letter addressed by Mr. JOHN suppose to be a serum obtained by the ANDREW to Consul BRENAN on the West cultivation of the plague bacillus. discovery of a remedy for the scourge which River trade. As an instance of the excessive visited Hongkong in 1894 and again this taxation on this great trade route Mr. ANDREW mentions that between Wuchow year and which threatens the whole of Asia and Posé the duties on cheap cloth amount is one of immense importance and if it be
to from forty to fifty per cent. To escape found to stand the test of scientific examina- this heavy taxation goods are sent by round- tion Dr. YERSIN, the discoverer, will take about routes, principally via Pakhoi and rank with the greatest benefactors of the race. Bishop CHAUSSE gives a plain and Tonkin, and Wuchow is robbed of much of the trade which by virtue of the favourable straightforward account of what came under situation of the town ought to belong to it. his own observation, but his narrative, stand-Native opium to the value of over $5,000,000 ing alone, will not be accepted by scientists is said to be brought down to Wuchow, and as absolutely conclusive. A boy in a Roman the traders from Kwangsi, Kweichow, and Catholic school at Canton was attacked with Yunnan all want to invest the proceeds of what was supposed to be plague, one of the their cargo in cotton yarn and piece goods and symptoms being a bubo. In the afternoon Dr. YERSIN happened to call upon the return home at once, but on account of the excessive lekin charged they cannot do so, Bishop, the case was introduced to his
having to remit the money to Hongkong notice, an injection of the curative serum in payment for goods to be sent via Pakhoi was made, and next morning the patient
or Tonkin. If the West River were opened was well. The question naturally suggests and taxation regulated a valuable direct itself whether the case was one of plague at trade between Hongkong and Wuchow all or whether there might not have been a
would come into existence and the acre mistake in the diagnosis. More than one
economical terms on which it could then be case will have to be successfully treated, conducted would result in a large addition and under independent medical observation, to the total volume of trade as at pre- before the remedy can be regarded as
sent conducted. In this connection there satisfactorily established, and we trust that in Hongkong every opportunity will be are some interesting remarks in Consul ALLEN's report on the trade of Foochow for afforded Dr. YERSIN to test the value of his last year, in which mention is incidentally discovery by practical experiment. The
made of Canton. Mr. ALLEN says the Canton case proves at least that the treat- ment is attended with no danger to the disadvantages under which trade labours at Foochow are want of communica- patient, so that there need be no hesitation tion with the interior and "a faulty, not to say utterly rotten and corrupt system of collecting revenue, wherein the vested in- "terests involved are so enormous that nothing short. of the reform of the whole "fiscal arrangements of China can set it right. Although the evils of this system are patent everywhere in the Empire there are two places where they are seen in their "most aggravated form. One is Canton, "the other Foochow." When Mr. ALLEN speaks of Canton in this connection we take it he refers to the whole viceroyalty. "The system of farming the taxes," he goes on or at least of making the official in charge of them remit a certain sum every year, while he puts the balance of the "amount into his own pocket, ensures the largest possible collection at the greatest "possible cost and the least possible "benefit to the Government. It is said "that the cost of collecting lekin is seventy per cent. of the total amount "realised. Though this is no doubt an exaggeration, yet the fact of its being "made shows how disproportionate the cost "of collection must be." These remarks show how important to foreign trade and how advantageous to China herself it would be to get rid of the squeeze stations every- where and to substitute for them an honest collectorate. The opening of the West River would effect that object along that important route, and the more complete the opening is made the better. When the announcement was made some time ago that an agreement had been arrived at on this subject there was an impression that it referred only to the one port of Wuchow, but the fact that Mr. BRENAN has recently asked Mr. ANDREW to mention the furthest station of navigation raises the presumption that the concession is not neces sarily to be of such a limited nature. Mr. ANDREW is of opinion that the opening of
Since his visit to Hongkong in 1894 Dr. YERSIN has been busily engaged in investigation and experiment, and his discovery of what he believes to be a cure for the plague is the result. He had suc- cessfully tried it upon rats affected with the disease, but until the other day had had no opportunity of subjecting a human being to the treatment. According to Bishop CHAUSSE, the doctor came to Hongkong in search of such an opportunity, but did not find it until it accidentally came in his way on his visit to Canton. We do not know whether he had applied to the medical authorities in this colony and been refused, though the fact that he had been for some time in the colony and had not found the opportunity he was in search of would seem to point to that conclusion. It will readily be understood that there is a certain amount of responsibility incurred in subjecting a human being to the test of an experiment with an unproved cure, and the medical authorities of Hongkong might ex- cusably shrink from allowing Dr. YERSIN to inject what he himself calls the venom of the plague bacillus into a patient under
The Canton case shows, how ever, that this may be done with safety, that whether it cures the patient or not it will at least do him no harm, and in the interests of science, of humanity, and of the material interests of this colony every opportunity ought to be afforded the dis- coverer of putting his discovery to the practical test of hospital practice.
their care.
The Nagasaki Shipping List of the 15th June says:-A sensational shooting affray is reported to have occurred on the steamer Nijny Novgorod upon her arrival on Friday. Details are as yet kept secret, but we understand that someone or other attempted to shoot the captain with a revolver. ·
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to say,
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secret treaty between China and Russia, "but admits that a Russian railway will be “built through Manchuria," the ex-Viceroy of Chihli has not been altogether so success- ful in his evasions as usual. If it be true that the Trans-Siberian railway is to be ex- tended through Manchuria to a port on the Yellow Sea, it is very clear that this ar rangement can only have been arrived at as the fruit of something more than a mere tacit understanding. To ask anyone to believe that the Chinese Government would voluntarily, or even as a token of gratitude for services rendered, authorise the con- struction of a foreign railway through Man- churia-the special heritage of the reigning dynasty-is to tax ordinary credence to the breaking point. It is true the service ren- dered by Russia (backed up by France and Germany) to China in compelling Japan to relinquish the spoils of war in the Linotung peninsula was a signal one, and saved the vanquished not only a great loss of face but also removed the fear of having established at no great distance from the capital a great naval and military Japanese strong- hold which would have always been a menace to the Manchu power at Peking. But the Tsung-li Yamen could not have been, blind to the fact that in admitting a Russian railway through Manchurian territory they were practically only making a choice of evils, the relative magni- tude of which was hard to gauge at the time. It would have been more galling to the Chinese Government, perhaps, had the Japanese retained the Regent's Sword so-called, but it may be doubted whether the conquerors would have been so formid- able as the silent acquisition of another slice of Manchuria-for that is what it will come to-by the CZAR. The real truth is, perhaps, that China had no option in the matter. China's necessity has always been Russia's opportunity. In 1860, after the victories of the Allied Forces and occupation of Peking, the astute diplomatists of Russia saw their chance and negotiated a new treaty by which their Siberian frontier was so favourably rectified that a whole province was gained. The same tactics were appar- ently adopted in 1895, but on this occasion the operation was more skilfully masked, and with the aid of her two confederates Russia was able to pose for a time as the disinterested champion of the defeated party. That position of course will be no longer tenable when it is made known, as LI HUNG-CHANG intimates is the fact, that a big price was exacted in payment of Mus covite assistance in making Japan withdraw. But the purpose is served, and our friends the Russians are not, like the French, hypersensitive to criticism so long as they get what they want. Nor can we blame them much. They most ardently desire a port on an unfrozen sea for the Pacific ter minus of their great railway, and they were
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