AGRICULTURAL BULLETIN 
OF THE 
5TRAIT5 
AND 
FEDERATED MALAY 5TATES. 
No. 9.] SEPTEMBER, 1910. [Vol. IX 
ESTATE SALTATION, 
By Dr. Brooke. 
An interesting lecture on estate sanitation was delivered by Dr. 
Brooke, Port Health Officer, before a large audience of planters in the 
Volunteer Drill Hall, on August 19th. 
He explained at the outset that he did not propose to give 
instruction regarding hospital buildings or the treatment of the sick. 
They had their medical officers for that. He was only going over 
two or three points regarding the surroundings and dwellings of 
coolies and a few points on the sicknesses amongst them. The coolie 
lines were the most important item to consider. What they wanted 
to secure was constructional cheapness with sanitary efficiency. 
Disease arose from dirt, and it was on the floor of buildings that the 
majority of the dirt was held, being not only brought in by the feet of 
people, but continually deposited from the air by gravity, so the most 
important part to consider in construction of coolie lines was to have 
some sort of floor that could be properly cleaned. They could have a 
floor made of all sorts of things, beaten mud, sand, wood, or some 
more permanent structure. A sand floor would be quite the worst 
because there they had a floor that would absorb all sorts of dirt and 
would be hard to keep clean. In a wood floor they had very much 
the same disadvantages ; they had a material which soaked in the 
mess. The dirt would not only get into the face of the wood, but in 
the cracks between the boards, and germs were very hard to dislodge. 
Probably for the tropics the best thing of all was a concrete floor with 
a smooth cement facing. If this was raised up in the. middle and 
