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9
" mission) will have to be adopter!, and that the sewage, whether previously
" clarified or not, must either be filtered through land, or discharged into the
" Estuary at a point not higher than sea reach."
This, your Worshipful Committee will remember, has been the opinion of
your Medical Officer from the first.
SMALL-POX.
On 22nd January the s.s. " Malwa " arrived in London having had smallpox
on board during the voyage.
Four distressed seamen were embarked at Hong Kong on 4th December.
The vessel reached Bombay on 23rd and left on 30th, one only of these four
going on shore. On 10th January one of them developed a rash, and high
temperature, and was sent to hospital at Port Said for " Typhus." On 18th
an undoubted case of small-pox was reported, and another on 21st. On
arrival at Plymouth these two men, with two other suspected cases, were
removed to the hospital hulk Pique " with all their effects.
It was thus, from the history, tolerably certain that the first man contracted
small-pox and not typhus in Bombay. I therefore communicated with the
Surgeon to the hospital at Port Said, and from him learned that the patient
died the day after admission from hœmorrhagic small-pox.
On the 22nd January the Metropolitan Asylums Board reported that a
seaman suffering from small-pox had been admitted from s.s. " Rowena." On
enquiry it was found that the vessel had sailed on 13th, the patient had left his
ship on arrival, and had stayed at a Scandinavian lodging-house from 7th to
20th. On 19th he was taken ill, and on 20th went to the Seamen's Hospital,
whence, two days later, he was removed to the small-pox hospital. It is clear,
therefore, that he contracted the disease in London.
On 24th a second case, from the same ship (probably infected from the
first), was sent from the London Hospital.
On 26th February the s.s. " Prometheus" on arrival reported having had
two cases small-pox on voyage.
She left Shanghai on 1st January, and both cases were attacked on 5th ;
they were landed with all their effects at Swatow the following day, and the
vessel fumigated.
Small-pox was reported to be very prevalent at Shanghai at that time.
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