Despite the fact that the practice of hygiene in China had been handed down for centuries, the adoption of new progressive ideas to cope with present-day problems had not made enough headway, a fact which was especially noticeable in the matter of the prevention of infectious disease, which might be regarded as the essence of modern hygiene.
After deploring the absence of compulsory notification in the case of infectious fevers the speaker referred to the hospital for such dis. eases established in Peking and remarked that it was a happy sign ut the times that the official classes were taking a keen interest in the prevention of disease.
The excellent work done by the Chinese Red Cross Isolation Hospital in Shanghai deserved mention, and the efficient system of rat examination, rat-proofing of houses, notification, ete, which had been carried on by the Health Department of Shanghai, could, with advantage, be adopted by the thorities in Kuangtung and Fukien Provinces, where there has been a yearly toll of deaths from bubonic plague since its introduction in 1804.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.