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difficulty of interference with ventilation, and the almost utter impossibility
of cleanliness.
I have endeavoured to deal with this matter to a certain extent by urging
the Indian Government to make some regulation with regard to the size of
these chests one of the articles of the agreement in hiring native crews, but
am fully alive to the fact that this is only one step in the right direction, and
that the only satisfactory one would be to increase the cubic space.
The contracts with native crews are all made at the three ports in India,
and therefore no action can be taken in this country.
SMALL-POX.
The almost complete absence of small-pox from London naturally increases
the importance of watching to prevent the introduction of cases from without,
and at the same time allows of tracing the result of each individual infection
with tolerable certainty.
There have been two cases only brought into the Port during the half-year.
On the 30th December the steam ship "London" arrived in London from
Lisbon. The engineer's steward was in hospital at that port from the 16th
to 24th, before he joined the vessel, suffering from some non-infectious
disease. He took his discharge in London and went to live in Shadwell.
On the 5th January he was taken to the Metropolitan Asylum Boards
Hospital, and the case reported by the Medical Officer of Health for the
District.
The vessel was at once fumigated and the bedding burned.
On inquiry it was found that there were cases of small-pox in the hospital
at the time this man was an in-patient, and that this mixing of infectious and
non-infectious diseases was the rule of the establishment. The attention of
the British Yice-Consul at Lisbon was therefore called to this constant source
of infection with the result that he reported later that, through his intervention,
this dangerous practice had been discontinued.
This was the third case traced to this one hospital.
On the 25th March the "Royal Alice" on arrival from Rio de Janeiro
reported having had seven cases of small-pox on the homeward voyage, four
of which terminated fatally.
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