Sufficient Doctors Available, But District Devastated: Battered by Junks From reports received by Dr. W. W. Peter, honorary secretary of the American Red Cross, it appears that the Swatow disaster occasioned a larger number of fatalities than was at first believed. A careiul. investigation of 32 small villages in the districts of Guasua amd Chenghai, conducted by Dr. and Mrs. M. O. Pfister for the Red Cross, indicates an appalling num-ler of deaths but few injuries or cases of sickness. The doctors on band are sufficient to cope with the situation, as, thanks to three weeks of sunshine, no epidemics have developed.
Little sickness is reported, but many skin diseases and boils have broken out, especially among children, The dead are probably all buried now, but in some places, especially where people have deserted a, village, dead animals are floating in the canals. Heaps of mouldy straw and other refuse are still left in the village streets, but the relief committee will endeavour have these burned. Not only are the crops destroyed, but mud stored rice has been spoiled and can only be fed to the pigs.
Dr. A. F. Groesbeck, of the American Baptist Mission in Chaoyanghsien, writes to the American Red Cross of China as follows "Here, as in many other places, the tidal wave was responsible for the larger loss of life. That wave simply lifted great junks out, of the sea and hurled them into villages and towns. Three junks went through the building we used for our dispensary. The building was built to withstand typhoons, but it could not withstand the force of those junks.
"All the patients were saved except one, whose body was recovered the next morning. The doctor escaped with his life, but lost everything he possessed. The stock of drugs is almost an entire loss. Many of the containers were crushed; salt water got into more of them and from many others the labels were washed off, so it is impossible to tell what the bottles contain. Our surgical instruments all got a salt water bath and are more or less ruined, in spite of every effort to clean them. On the whole, we are in a desperate condition and the calls for help are "proportionately great."
The itemized report made by Dr. Pfister shows a loss of life of from 6 to 80 per cent. of the inhabitants of these small villages. In one instance, out of a population of 228 there were 177 deaths and only five women survived. Many houses collapsed. In some cases the whole village was levelled and the survivors sought refuge elsewhere. The supply of drinking water in some localities has a salty taste, the crops are ruined every-
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