The Health Exhibition literature. Vol. XIX : Return of number of visitors and statistical tables. Official guide. Guide to the sanitary and insanitary houses. Handbook to the aquarium and fish culture department. Anthropometric laboratory. Public health in China. National education in China. Diet, dress, and dwellings of the Chinese in relation to health.

  • International Health Exhibition (1884 : London, England)
Date:
1884
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Health Exhibition literature. Vol. XIX : Return of number of visitors and statistical tables. Official guide. Guide to the sanitary and insanitary houses. Handbook to the aquarium and fish culture department. Anthropometric laboratory. Public health in China. National education in China. Diet, dress, and dwellings of the Chinese in relation to health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    (The term “ Celestials ” as applied to the people of China is a misnomer.) We shall complete what we have here to say in relation to dress in general if we add one circumstance which has an important bearing upon nealth. We have said that the great variation in the seasons demands distinct summer and winter garments. The people have to guard against moths, or thieves, or poor relations, or it may be want of room, or, still worse, poverty ; but whatever be the cause, the great body of the Chinese confide the care of the garments, when not in use, to the pawnshop. They lodge their summer clothes there, and take out their winter suit and vice versa. It seems in their circumstances to be the wisest course, even in spite of the attendant expense. At the time of pawning it gives them a little capital, upon which they trade. Pawnshops in China are of the very highest respectability, at least from the native point of view. They are considered the safest banks. A great trade is thus carried on with these pledges, and they therefore form an important part of the life of the people. I have observed that the outbreak of small-pox at Peking takes place annually at the period when the winter clothes are taken out of pawn. The germs of the disease seem to have been lying dormant in the clothes all summer, and break out afresh in the autumn, just at the time when, by the superstitious notions of the people, grafted on that] Heaven-sent prophylactic against the “ Heavenly Flowers ” —the Jennerian discovery—vaccination is not practised. How fortunate it is that the Chinese have taken so kindly! to vaccination. When the great Oriental peoples have become fully protected, there may be some hope of exter- minating this dreadful scourge. Except for this beneficent] discovery, no European community could hold India or] live in China. The Chinese began to vaccinate in the early j years of the century at Canton, and now the practice has? extended over the whole Empire. I cannot learn thatj inoculation is now anywhere practised, and an applica-^. j tion for i>c>nd fide inoculation virus could not be obtained;'A