A typical figure in the weekly health report, just issued, gives some impression of the extent to which tuberculosis is rife among the Chinese community of this Colony. No fewer than 80 persons succumbed to the disease during the week. When it is borne in. mind that tuberculosis is not a notifiable disease, and when it is further remembered that many Chinese sufferers leave the Colony in the last stages of the disease, so that they may die in their own country, it will be realized how high the mortality is. It has, in fact, been computed that at least 80,000 inhabitants of the Colony, that is, one in every ten, suffer from the disease. A doctor, reckoning what these suf-forers spend in medicine, on a basis of 50 cents per day, recently pointed out that this involved some $14,0005 000 per annum, to say nothing of hospital expenses or loss of wages.
Yet, in face of these facts, there exists in this Colony no organized method of combating the disease—a fact which was mentioned a few days ago when Dr. Giles Hall, of the Peiping Union Medical College, gave an address at the Rotary Club on the mea: is which are there taken for the prevention and cure of- "T.B." Dr. Hall showed that the clinic at the P.U.M.C. is doing splendid work at a relatively small cost, and he laid stress also on the point that much can be done in: the home to combat the disease. He disputed the idea that tuberculosis is an economic problem, saying that 'f known principles of wealth were followed it could be fovent at any economic level. There can, nonetheless, be no questioning tne point that the low standard of living of the masses of this Colony is a contributory cause both to the incurring of the disease and to its spicad. There is at present sitting a Housing Commission, one of whose problems will be the overcrowding evil. Its report is awaited with deep interest.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.