Tae Reports of the Health Officer.and of the Physician to the General Hospital have received a good deal of attention since their publication, This has nob arisen from any startling statements which they contain, for they are rather tame documents, but from anxiety in the public mind about smallpox. This is not to be wondered at, when this hideous disease has proved so fatal Inst your that twenty-five per cent. died of those who were attacked by it. People are not only alarmed about the prevalence of the 0 but bout the hospital, or rather the wards in Chinese houses that have been used for the reception of smallpox patients being situate in the midst of a populous district. There is a desire rather generally felt and expressed, that, as soon as it can be done, the mistake of having the smallpox wards contiguous to the General Hospital should be set right. A smallpox hospital should never be placed near to, still less in the midst of, the dwellings of large numbers of people. This is especially the onse where such crowds of the poorer classes live under the conditions which we have in Shanghai. We have small houses which are in most onses overcrowded, and, as a rule, are in an une clean, if not in a filthy condition. The strosts or alleys in which the houses are built are narrow and filled with noisome effluvia, Places more likely to be conductors of disease it would hard to imagine. Yetit would seem as if by placing the smallpox wards close by such districts, we increased the means by which one of the most horrible of diseases may be diffused. OF course the removal of the smallpox wards to a retired place will involve some changes in the conduct if the General Hospital. But these are as nothing compared to the risk of endangering the public health. And every change that is necessary can be effected
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.