1
200
The crowds which flocked off on the launch's on Saturday to view the Minnesold saw a great deal to marvel at in the arrangements made for the comfort and convenience of passengers, and the increasing size as well as the increasing num. ber of steamers crossing the Pacific suggest a time when it will be as cheap to get to England | via America as vía the Suez Canal, We have seen great developments in recent years in the German steamship services to the Far East via the Suez Canal and we are having it made manifest to us at this season of the year how passengers struggle to book berths on the largest steamers. How long, I won ler, shall we have to wait before the P. and O. Company put some of their largest steamers on this run? Sir Thomas Sutherland a few months ago in a speech foreshadowed this, but there is no iudication that they are coming this year.
It is satisfactory to learn from the annual report of the Superintendent of Police that during the year 1904 there was a very sub- stantial decrease in the number of serious offences as compared with the number in the
previous year. There is no hing in the
Report suggesting an explanation of the decrease, but it is possibly due largely to the more peaceful and prosperous state of the neighbouring provinces, and also to the frequent
use of the stocks as a form of punishment in cases of robbery and larceny.
The outcry against the increase in the price of butcher's meat in Hongkong does not se m to have had any marked effect except on the activities of the Dairy Farm Co. who have seized the opportunity to make known the possibilities of a great development of their frozen meat business. Noticing the remarks in the Hongkong papers ou this subject, and particularly the references made to the example set by the foreign community of Kobe, the Japan Chronicle remarks:-" There is nothing like united individual action, and it is just possible that had there been a little more of it among foreign residents the cry would not be so load at the present time concerning the increased cost of living all round." There was s time in the history of Hongkong when the community seized upon any excuse for a public indignation meeting, but the suggestion of such a thing now-a-days is regarded with Absolute indifference. The increased cost of living all round" is, to be sure, a theme on which any number of speeches could be made, and if we could get a little more of this united in dividual action it is just possible that the Government might be induced to consider the many ways in which they could assist the com- munity in the matter. Reverting to the price meat, it seems to be accepted as a sufficient exouse that the Chinese authorities of the neighbouring provinces have deemed it necessary to limit the export of cattle. But what is the Government doing to encourage the breeding of cattle in the New Territory which was so ardently advocated a few years ago We have in Hongkong means of checking" squeeze pidgin" in this connection which is denied to the foreign communities further north, if only we would use them.
46
11
Anent the "Musings in a Hongkong Chair published a few days ago in the Daily Press, a question which must often suggest itself to those who muse in Hongkong Chairs, is
Why do we call the queue a pig-tail!" Surely the queue is no more like the curly caudal appendage of the pig than it is like the horn of a buffalo. The explanation doubtless is that
pig-tail" is a description which has been passed down to us like a heirloom from our English forebears who came to China a century ago or more when the term "pig-tail" was in common use in England to describe the tonsorial mode of the day.
"tails The
of our English forefathers were much shorter than are the quenes of the Chinese, and therefore more nearly auswered to the descriptive term " "pig-tail." The Army was the first to abandon them in the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, but the Navy stuck to them until 1825, and their dis appearance was then lamented in a pathetic
ballad, the refrain of which ran :---
Oh, long shall poor old England
That unhappy day bewail, sir That turned her tars to croppies
And left Jack without his tail, sir!
BANYAN.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND HONGKONG SANITARY:
in
BOARD.
A meeting of the Sanitary Board was held the Board Room on March 21st. Dr. F. Clark (President) presided, and there were also present Hon. Mr. A. W. Brewin Col. W. E. Webb, R.A.M.C., Mr. A. Rumjahn, Mr. Fung Wa Chun, Mr. Lau Chu Pak, Dr. H. Macfarlane, Dr. F. Gröne, Dr. Pearse, and Mr. T. A. Hanmer (Secretary).
The minutes of the previous meeting were confirmed.
RE CEMETERY BYE-LAW8.
The Registrar General sent in the following minute I beg to invite the attention of the Board to the Cemetery Bye-laws (p. 93 of Ord. 1 of 1903) and to suggest the amen ment of Bye-liwe A 4 and 7 and B 14 and 16. The bye- laws provide for the digging of graves to s depth of seven feet, and for the covering of the surface with chunam among other substances. The first provision causes unnecessary labour and
of
WB
[Mragh 25, 1905, four feet is quite sufficient, and if the grave is turfed there is no feaf of the loose soil being washed away.
Dr. Atkinson minuted-I agree with the M.O.H. that it is not advisable to alter the bye-laws. Burying in ter acs as we do here seems to require a depth of seven feet. Although the aim of earth burial is to facilitate the ultimate reduction of the body into its component elements, the bacteria which affect this are increased in the deeper layers of the soil, at least some bacteriologists say so. I think all grives should be covered with turf. Giave are not turfed as a rule until a year after interment, to allow soil to settle down.
The REGISTRAR General moved that the
bye-law in question, Rule 14 should read that the depth of ground be reduced from seven to five feet.
Mr. LAU CHU PAK 80conded.
Dr. PEAESE sid:-The object of earth burial of the dead is to promote speedy de- composition and disintegration in such a manner as to cause no danger to the living. This is best accomplished by burial in the upper layers. of the soil. The depth at which it is necessary to bury is conditioned by (1) the possibility of remains being detected by animals and dug up (2) the necessity for the sufficiency of soil above the body to absorb evil smelling gases and to avoid accidental uncovering. These con- ditions will bmt by having a uniform depth of two feet of soil above the coffin and by taking care to prevent storm wa'er from washing away the soil over graves, and further by turfing When organic matter is buried in the upper the graves promptly after burial.
layers of the earth it is attacked by animil and vegetable organisms, the animal world being chi fly represented by the insects and the vegetable world by the bacteria. A body beforę it is buried has already began to decompose through the agency of the baste is it contains, when it is pla ed in the earth this decomposition is helped by the soil bacteria. It becomes the bacterial food of the living earth. Deep burial retards this process. In place of the speedy disintegration and decomposition, there takes place a slow process of putrefaction with the elimination of more putrid gases than when the body is properly but less deeply buried. If a body be buried deeply enough to prevent dogs detecting it by their sense of smell, the question of contamination of the air by gases rising through the soil may be dismissed. Contamination of ground water is far more likely to occur as a consequence of deep burial than of shallow burial, inasmuch as in the former case the filtering power of the living earth in the upper layers is d'spens d with. With regard to the burial of bodies dead from infectious diseases, while it is impossible to make a definite statement founded on scientific evidence to the effect that it is quite impossible for the air of a graveyard to contain organisms derived from the buried bodies, yet on the other hand there is absolutely no scientific foundation for such a belief. Specific organisms of disease may possibly be carried from the graves into water courses and this is far more possible with deep than with shallow burial generally, the tread of modern opinion_with organis as in the soil, is that the more they are regard to the persistence of specific disease brought into contact with the naturally occurring saprophytic organisms of the Chinese soil, the
With
expense in digging the grave, and is directly opposed to the teachings of sanitary science. The sec nd provision is also unsanitary as the chunam forms an impervions covering. The bye-laws should in my opinion be amended by changing seven into five and by loving out the word chunam. The undertaker's licences, a copy of which I attach, should be similarly altered by changing "not less than six English feet" iuto "not less than three English feet,"
Dr. Clark minuted-I am not disposed to recommend the Board to amend the Cemetery Bye-laws on the lines "indicated by the Hon. Registrar General. It must be borne in mind that cemetery bye-laws are framed primarily to preserve the purity of the atmosphere and not necessarily to secure the most speedy decomposition of the dead body, The burial of corpses close to the surface invariably leads to the contamination of the atmosphere by the gaseous and other products decomposition, and this is especially liable to occur in cemeteries such as we have in this Colony-built on the side of a hill, so that a beavy rain storm may at any time r move the layer of the surface soil, especially in recently filled graves, and expose the coffins if they are, not buried at an adequate depth. Moreover, it' is well known that the germs of n t a few diseases, such for instance as plague and typhoid f-ver, can live in the surface soil, and although the Government Bacteriologist has stated in his report on plague that plague bacilli bave not yet been found in earth surrounding coffins containing plague corpses, yet this is hardly conclusive evidence in the present stale of our knowledge concerning this disease, and althongh all recognised deaths from plague are interred in a special cemetery, yet it cannot be denie that a considerable percentage of unrecoguised cases is interred in the general cemeteries. The model Bye-laws of the Local Government Board of England require every potion f the coffin containing an adult body to be not less than four feet below the surface of the surrounding ground, and allowing for the extra depth of a Chinese coffin, and allowing a margin of error in the measurement made by the Chinese sexton, there is not much difference force at home. The undertaker's licence might between our bye-laws and the regulations in be altered from six English feet to five English feet, as an allowance of one foot only, for the extreme depth of
more rapidly will they die out coffin is considerably below the average
This holds good for plague, typhoid and regard to the question of chunam, the bye-law cholers. It is true that certain experimentors specifies "turf or chunam or other material ap have kept the typhoid bacillus Alive in proved by the Board" and as chunam is hardly soil for long periods.g. over a year.
Speaking
ever used now-a-days for this purpose, except | It 'oes not follow however that typhoid bacilli for the repair of tho e large Chinese graves in a dead body can survive for any length of which are no longer allowed in the cemeteries time in a properly made grave, Dr. Robertson owing to the exigencies of space, it is hardly in 1898 found by ex eriment that the bacillus worth while to amend a bye-law in this respect, typhosus quickly did in the soil of especially as, with the exception of the Tung grass covered areas. Dr. Sydney Martin and one or two other very small cemeteries (e.g. he Wah Hospital Cemetery at Kai Lung Wan 1898-19 1, found that in sterilised soils the Eurasian and Chinese Protestant) this work it alive for over a year.
could cultivate the bacillus and keep This kind of is done by officers of the 8 nitary Department soil does not occur in nature. He also found at the cost of the Government, and turf is in that if the bacillus is added to natural un- variably used for the purpose.
cultivated soils it ceases to exist within 24 hours. If the bacillus be assumed to persist in a grave it is less dangerous when_shalloy than, deep, as the deeper it is the more likelihood would there be of the ground water being con
Mr. Rumjahn minuted-The depth mustle at least fire fet as suggested by the M. O. H.
Mr. Lau Chu Pak minuted-It appears that no one is sure what depth is necessary. I think
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.