🚀 go-pugleaf

men;" i.e., more than one man in four of the whole soldiery had
    been in hospital for this "comparatively rare" disease.

    As regards the Navy, Dr. Murray says, "the evidence of Dr.
    Bernard, the Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals and Fleets, is
    even more satisfactory. He writes (Jan. 27), 'I am enabled to say
    that true syphilis is now rarely contracted by our men in Hong
    Kong.'" Yet the "China station," in which Hong Kong occupies so
    important a position, had at the time 25 per cent. more _secondary
    (true) syphilis than any other naval station in the world, except
    one (the S.E. American_); it had 101 of _primary (true) against
    68 in the North American_, 31 in the S.E. American, and 22 in the
    Australian stations (_all unprotected_); and _gonorrhoea_ was
    _higher than in any other naval station in the world_. This
    _official_ misleading feature is to be found in other quarters
    than Dr. Murray's Reports; for in the _Navy_ Report for 1873
    (p. 282), Staff Surgeon Bennett, medical officer of the ship
    permanently stationed in Hong Kong, says--"Owing to the excellent
    working of the Contagious Diseases Acts, venereal complaints in
    the colony are reduced _to a minimum_. The _few cases_ of syphilis
    are chiefly due to private prostitutes not known to the police."

In a representation made to the Secretary of State by W.H. Sloggett,
Inspector of Certified Hospitals, October 7, 1879, we get an exact
account of what led to the passage of the Contagious Diseases
Ordinance of 1857. He says: "In 1857, owing to the very strong
representations which had been made to the Governor during the
previous three years, by different naval officers in command of the
China Station, of the prevalence and severity of venereal disease at
Hong Kong, a Colonial Ordinance for checking these diseases was passed
in November of that ye