PLAGUE PROCEDURE IN HONGKONG. 



By Dr. J. M. Atkinson. 1 

 (Principal Civil Medical Officer Hongkong.) 



The plague procedure now in force in the colony of Victoria is as 

 follows: 1. Notification. 2. Isolation. 3. Disinfection. 4. Segregation 

 of contacts. 5. Cleansing operations. i 



1. Notification. — The main difficulty has been that the Chinese will 

 not notify the authorities of the occurrence of the disease, preferring to 

 hide their cases, and to deposit the body in the street after death. This 

 procedure applies also to persons dying from other infectious diseases, 

 such as smallpox, diphtheria, etc., and it is to a great extent caused by 

 the dread these people have of disinfecting operations. This is proved 

 by the fact that the percentage of bodies so deposited increased very 

 considerably after the enforcement, in 1903, of the disinfection of houses 

 on either side of the ones in which plague-infected rats had been found, 

 in accordance with the recommendations made by Professor Simpson. 

 The percentage of bodies so found was 32.7 in 1903 as compared with 

 25.1 in 1898. 



2. Isolation. — Victims attacked by the disease are treated in the infec- 

 tious disease hospitals at Kennedy Turn, one of which is a Government 

 institution conducted as such institutions are in the Occident, the other, 

 a native branch of Tung Wah Hospital, administrated by the Chinese, but 

 under our sanitary supervision. 



District plague hospitals have been established in Victoria and Hong- 

 kong during the past two years in order to obviate the necessity of remov- 

 ing the patients to such a distance as the situation of the Kennedy Turn 

 hospitals; they are also allowed to be treated by their own doctors, the 

 intention being, by these concessions, to obtain the cooperation of the 

 Chinese and to prevent or minimize the depositing of plague bodies in 

 the streets. 



3. Disinfection. — This is rigidly enforced, compensation being given 

 for any damage clone to clothing. The process of disinfection consists 



1 Read at the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Philippine Islands Medical Asso- 

 ciation, March 3, 1907. 



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