Report on the causes and continuance of plague in Hongkong and suggestions as to remedial measures / by W.J. Simpson, M.D., F.R.C.P.

  • Simpson, W. J. (William John), Sir, 1855-1931.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report on the causes and continuance of plague in Hongkong and suggestions as to remedial measures / by W.J. Simpson, M.D., F.R.C.P. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    previous year. Its east side abutted on another house, which had also in a former year been affected with plague, while its west side was next to a house in which there had been five persons attacked with symptoms corresponding to plague early in January, and who had fled to China. It was reported that three of the five had died. A plague-infected rat had been found a fortnight earlier a few yards away from the house. If the woman had not been the wife of a respectable Indian, it is very probable that the sanitary authorities would not have learnt of her illness at first hand, any more than they did of the five other cases. The block in which the house is situated contains twenty houses, and in four of them during the process of cleaning twenty-two dead rats \s ere found between the ceiling and floor of the lower and upper rooms. The walls of the houses were hollow and riddled with rat holes, the space between the hollow walls being evidently used as rat runs; in fact there was no obstacle to prevent rats entering at one end of the block and passing from house to house to the other end. The basement floors of the houses were mostly of concrete, which formed a protection against the entrance of rats into the rooms from under the floor, but the gain in this respect was lost by the hollow walls and covered-in ceilings, which served as excellent shelters for rats, infected and healthy. As the block and the locality })ossess an evil rej)utation for plague, the twenty houses were vacated until they were repaired, accommodation for the inhabitants being provided by the Government in a new block of buildings close by, hired for the purpose. There was no case in this neigh- bourhood after this until the end of May. The next case reported was that of a Portuguese boy at school, who was attacked with plague in the last week of Februa,ry. and which proved fatal. He suffered from a bubo in the groin. The source of infection was not traced. The relatives removed to the grandmother's house, and in two months' time there was a second case of plague among them. There is reason to believe that a number of articles of clothing were taken from the house before disin- fection. The next case was found in the street, and no trace of the house from which the body had been taken and deposited in the street could be discovered. The fourth was a Portuguese boy who was attacked with pneumonic plague. The case gave rise to two others, obviously due to infec- tion. The house was one in which a large number of rats had died under the floor in 1901. 11. The arrival about this time of Dr. Hunter, the bacteriologist for the Relation of Colony, rendered possible the daily examination of a small proportion of the iiuman^'' ^ rats found dead in the street in diflerent parts of the city, and this examina- I'^^^^ne. tion disclosed the fact that a small percentage of the rats in certain quarters of the city were infected. Later, a daily examination of the rats caught in cages or found dead was made on a much more extended scale by three of the Japanese medical men who were engaged by the Government of Hong- kong to assist in the medical management of the plague. The method was most valuable in locating infected centres and infected houses, and as time went on it was evident that what had been observed in the towns and villages of China, with reference to the rat mortality preceding plague, was also true in Hongkong, and that plague-infected rats in a house or locality meant sooner