Plague cases treated in the Kennedy Town hospital / Hong Kong.

  • Hong Kong.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Plague cases treated in the Kennedy Town hospital / Hong Kong. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    2/16 (page 2)
    9. Before looking at the actual figures, there are two circumstances that need to he mentioned, and for which due allowance must he made:— (1) —The treatment with Carbolic Acid was commenced late in the epidemic, at a stage when there is a greater natural tendency to recovery, the disease being invariably more virulent early in the season. (2) —Coincidently with my beginning the use of Carbolic Acid, Dr. Bell announced his modification of Ross’s method for the examination of a thick film of malaria blood as a method for the examination of plague blood ; and as a consequence of this improved means of diagnosis a much larger number of very mild cases, many of which would not have been diagnosed as Plague in former years, were proved to be Plague and sent to Kennedy Town. These cases swelled the pro- portion of cases recovering. 10. I should like in passing to express my sense of the great value of Bell’s method for the diagnosis of Plague. I at once put it in routine use both at Tung Wall Hospital and at Kennedy Town Hospital. At Kennedy Town it has notonlv added to precision of diagnosis, but it has enabled one to watch more definitely the progress of the illness; and I have used this, as I have mentioned, as my guide in the use of Carbolic Acid, while disappearance of the Plague Bacilli from the blood circulation has become a sine qua non before discharge from the Hospital. 11. The following tables show the racial and general mortality before and during the use of Carbolic Acid; and to facilitate comparison I submit the total figures for the current year, to date, alongside the corresponding figures for 1901 and 1902:— European , Portuguese, Chinese, ... Other Race; BEFORE CARBOLIC ACID WAS USED. i.e., in the First Half of the Epidemic. ( Jases. Cured. I ! ('oXYALES- CEXT. I >EATHS. Mortality. 2 1 l 1 50.0° 0 123 15 -) i ~ 10C SC.2 .. 14 2 1 12 85.7 .. 139 IS V, i * 119 85.0 °0 20 UNDER THE USE OF CARBOLIC ACID. i.e., in the Second Half of the Epidemic. i Europeans, 22 i l Portuguese, 1 Chinese, 80 Other Races, 40 17 1 31 20 1—* • l4- 1 40 5 4.5 °0 57.5 „ 12.5 „ 143 09 22 52 30.4 °0 v— ' 91