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THE ADMINISTRATION OF SIR A. E. KENNEDY.
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community. One hundred men of H.M.S. Barossa were attacked with fever in 1872, whilst the ship was in dock at Aberdeen. Genuine typhoid fever was not noticed in the Colony until 1874, when some cases were imported by ships. Dengue fever occurred in Hongkong for the first time in September, 1872, imported from the North. It was officially declared an infectious disease (October 4, 1872). In 1874. many cases of phthisis occurred both among the European and Chinese communities. But on the whole there was no extraordinary outbreak of serious disease during this period. The attention of the Government was drawn by Dr. Ayres, in spring 1874, to the extraordinary defects of scavenging and domestic sanitation in the Chinese quarters of Taipingshan and Saiyingpun, where it had become customary to keep, under Government licences, pigs on the upper floors of densely crowded houses. The scavenging arrangements of the town were somewhat improved in consequence (October 2, 1874). but otherwise the sanitation of the Colony remained as it was. The annual death rate of Hongkong per 1,000 of the whole population was 22·57 in 1873, 32·20 (owing to the many deaths caused by the typhoon) in 1874, and 24·29 in 1875, but Dr. Ayres remarked, in his report for 1876, that, considering the defective sanitation of the town, it was a wonder to him that the mortality was so small. Mount Davis and the hill side above Kennedy Road were covered with fir trees in 1876 and a large number of eucalyptus trees, imported from Australia, were planted in different localities. Building operations on the Peak multiplied in summer 1876 and residence on the Peak now commenced to be widely popular as a summer resort. The Civil Hospital having been demolished by the typhoon of 1874, the patients were accommodated in the former Hotel de l'Univers in Hollywood Road whilst a new and larger hospital was erected. The private Seamen's Hospital, erected by Jardine, Matheson & Co. on the hill above Wantsai, having for years been carried on at a loss, was closed in March 1873. The Small-pox Hospital, which from 1871 to 1873 had been located on Stonecutters' Island, was also closed in April, 1873, and the patients were thenceforth