1-
April 25, 1903.1
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
AMERICA AND THE PHILIPPINES.
(Daily Press, 22nd April.) a reputation as a health resort, but it seems Hongkong has not enjoyed until recently to be rapidly acquiring that reputation among the American residents in the Philippines. During the past two months hundreds of American officials have taken the trip to Hongkong to spend their vacation leave here, and have found the change agreeable enough to establish a decided preference for the British Colony. They speak in flattering terms of its general air of prosperity, and of its ad- ministration, as well of its climate, in con- (genus, Culex) in that its approach is trast with the conditions prevailing in the not heralded by that noisy "ping that
Philippines. It well known that numbers of characterises the latter; that it farely bites American business men who have come out to except between sunset and sunrise, and the Philippines in search of the Almighty while the Culex will breed in any old Dollar have already returned home dis- flower pot or tin containing water, the appointed in their hopes and extremely Anopheles generally requires as a breeding-pessimistic in their views of the future of ground a more sheltere pool, containing that Islands unless the whole conception of perhaps organic matter in suspension or a government speedily undergoes a radical small quantity of water weed, and the water change. Business, according to all ac- of which is neither stagnant nor yet pure counts, has been at a standstill for a long spring water. Dr. CLARK in his Report time, labour is bad and the country undeve for 1900 stated that the Anopheles are loped, and the openings for the white man almost always to be found in the neigh in the Islands are regarded as few and far bourhood of native dwellings, and that some between. "The worst of it is," says the 1 to 5 per cent. of them will be found to Manila Times "most of what is said is true. contain the malarial organism.
Conditions are bad and many Americans, disgusted with the way things are going on, are leaving the islands.”
the community are invited to subscribe. | malarial mosquito) will stand, as it The reports coming from missionaries were, on its forefeet, keeping its body clearly establish the fact that in certain almost perpendicular, while the body of the districts of the province at least the suffering Culex as it alights is always horizontally is terribly acute and the urgent need of poised. The defect of this advice is that outside help incontestable. The tales of it allows the bloodthirsty inseat to satisfy misery and woo recorded in the course of its craving perhaps before we have time to our report of yesterday's meeting, by way correctly guage the poise of its body and to of illustrating the general condition in the act as the circumstances would dictate. As agricultural districts, cannot fail to evoke the however the bite of the Culex is more compassion and practical sympathy of the irritating than that of the malarial genus, reader with the afflicted people on who:s it seems hardly worth the while of the behalf the appeal is made, and that there smiler to stay his hand. Our own Medical will be a ready and general response to the Officer has given fuller and more useful appeal we have no doubt. Especially will instructions as to how the one can be dis- this be the case when it is seen that the tinguished from the other. The Anopheles, Chinese who live in more favoured surround-e says, differs from the ordinary mosquito ings are doing something to help their afflicted brethren in the famine-stricken districts. When people have to resort to the expedient of selling their children in order to save themselves and to ensure food for their offspring, it sows how dire is the need, and the fact that many are dying of sheer starvation in a country where food ordinarily is so cheap constitutes an appeal which is strong enough to need no backing for the help which above all things must be pron.pt. Au influential committee was appointed at yesterday's meeting for the purpose of ascertaining (1) the extent of the famine, the collection of the neces- sary relief funds; and (3) the mode of their distribution. HIS EXCELLENCY, it will be observed, has made enquiries from many sources in the province because he was anxious, as he put it, not to make any move in the Latter until he had satisfied himself that there really was such a state of want and famine as would justify him in coming before the people of Hongkong and asking them to subscribe towards its alleviation.
"
*
MOSQUITOES AND MALARIA.
(Daily Press 20th April.)
17
It is very satisfactory to note in the Report of the Medical Officer of Health for 1902 a very substantial decrease of deaths from malarial fevers in the Colony. Among the Chinese the total number of deaths from this cause last year was 393, as compared with 541 during the previous year, 887 during 1900, and 582 during 1899. "The training of the nullahs on the outskirts of the City Dr. CLARK says, "is the "only practicable means of reducing the "death rate from this cause." The Medical Officer tendered this and much other advice on the same subject in his Report for 1900, and a considerable sm of money has since been expended in this effort to get rid of the malarial mosquito. We may take it that the substantial decline in the death. rate froin malaria is the direct result of this endeavour, and should tend to encourage the Government and the public generally in all similar efforts which have for their object the extermination of the microbe-bearing mosquito known the Anopheles There is no longer any room to doubt that malaria is conveyed from one person to another by this particular mosquits, for wherever systematic measures have been adopted to rid malarial areas of the Anopheles mosquito, a decrease in the prevalence of malarial fever bas immediately followed.
44
C
Dr. CLARK therefore recomiended :—(1) that European houses should be distant some 400-500 yards at least from native dwellings, But while the journal above mentioned this being the extent of the distance the agrees that the causes enumerated above. Anopheles is capable of travelling; (2) that doubtless account to a large extent for the all pools in which Anopheles can breed migration that has taken place, it ventures to should be filled up or drained for a like suggest as another factor the circumstance distance, around such European houses; that the major portion of the original (3) that all brushwood and rank vegetation, colonists were hardly the kind of men the including grass, should be kept down by islands needed. They were volunteers who frequent cutting; and (4) that mosquito- came out primarily to fight, and with no nets should be used at night. A certain definite resolve or preparation to settle amount of work was done in the Colony in down to industry, so that when a period the year 1900 by the treatment of some of of depression set in, and stringency the Anopheles pools with parafin, and the and contraction became the order of the filling up of others with concrete, but as the day, these men, nst being firm and secure number of deaths recorded that year from in the positions they occupied, were so malarial fevers greatly exceeded that of affected as to find it advantageous and previous years, Dr. CLARK expressed the expedient to move. The same may be said, opinion that nothing but a thorough scheme our contemporary adds, with regard to of training the nullahs on the outskirts of many other Americans who came out with- the city would have any appreciable effect out any specific plans or occupations in in reducing the number of mosquitoes view, and totally ignorant of the conditions. capable of carrying infection. As we have For the right kind of men, the Manila already pointed out, the work done in tha: Times declares it cannot be denied that direction during the last two years seems justi- there are abundant opportunities, especially fied by the results shown by the medical in the line of manufactures. "We could returns. It is strange that the Medical Officer “have more hat and match manufacturies, should have omitted to specifically include "and there is also an opening for more the "street gullies" in his enumeration "lumber mills, for paper mills, for wood of the breeding-places of the mosquito, "and cabinet work, for tauneries, for pot- and we commend the attention of the
"teries, and for other industries where authorities to the letter from Mr. R. K."modern, labour-saving devices could be LEIGH, C.E., which appears in jour columns to-day in which he recommends the aboli- tion of these "cesspits of dirty water for the double reason that they are full of mos- quitoes and are in EL great measur a countable for the bad smells met with in our streets, while they appear to be useless for the purpose for which they were provided.
Since it has thus been proved that the crusade against the mosquito is some- thing more than a medical fad," the duty rests on every one of us to beware of the mosquito and to slay him when we can. We remember hearing a medical lecturer tell hisudience that one way to distinguish the malarial from the Kere ordinary mosquito was to note how they alight on a person; the Anopheles (the
97
"
brought into play. The same holds true "to a large extent of our agriculture, which "is still conducted with the methods in vogue two or three hundred years ago."
Apparently our contemporary seeks to get over the labour difficulty by advocating a more extensive use of labour-saving ma chinery, and ignores the demand for Chinese labour which in the opinion of many business men is the great immediate need. The keynote of American rule in the Islands has been declared to be "the Philippines for the Filipino," and the aim of the benevolent tutor is that the natives should govern themselves just as do the people of Arizona or Oklahoma. America is assumed to merely aiding them until experience shall
The Manila authorities are prosecuting many barbe s in the City for breaches of the Sanitary regulations. The Chinese are great transgres- sors in this respect and on prosecuting twelve of them last week, the police testified that their shops were in a filthy condition, the same water the razors were never cleaned and the shops was used all day in shaving dozens of Chinese,
the breeding-place of disease. Judge so change their racial temperament and Liddell sentenced them to pay fines ranging educate them to a proper appreciation of from two to five dollars.
republican institutions as to fit them to
}
1
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.