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HEALTH AND SANITATION. 
HEALTH AND SANITATION ON ESTATES. 
By Dr. S, H. R, Lucy, 
( Senior Health Officer, F.M.S.) 
| N considering the problems connected with sanitation upon 
estates in the Federated Malay States I propose in the first 
instance to speak from the point of view of a sanitarian concerned 
with the opening up of virgin jungle for cultivation and the 
employment thereon of immigrant labour. 
Site for Cooly Lines. 
Much trouble and expense in the future may be saved by a 
judicious choice of site for lines, it is within the experience of many 
of you, for one reason or another, generally the occurrence of severe 
malaria, that it has become necessary to abandon certain line sites, 
much financial loss being thereby entailed, especially when the lines 
and wells were built of permanent materials. 
In the early days of coffee or rubber planting it was the common 
practice to choose for a line site the edge of a ravine or swamp, the 
main factors which determined this choice being the easy access 
to water, a shallow hole in the ground provided a sufficiency, or the 
unsuitability of the land for cultivation. 
In the first stages of opening an estate it must often be 
impossible to fix upon a permanent line site, it is however not 
usually difficult to find a temporary site that has no obvious 
disadvantages, the main points to be considered are accessibility, 
configuration of the land, and its relative distance from ravines, 
swamps, and alienated or unalienated land over which you will be 
unable to exercise any control. 
Accessibility. 
A central site may be too remote to suit the convenience of your 
coolies, but it renders more easy the work of your labour gangs and 
a site which abuts upon a busy road or crowded village may present 
many objections. 
Within limits there can be no doubt that concentration of your 
labour is desirable, where there are congregated large numbers 
of coolies they are healthier and happier than when scattered about 
the estate in small parties. Concentration facilitates supervision, 
it used to be considered a danger in the case of an outbreak of 
