Colonial Medical Reports

Abstract

MAJOR P. GRANVIHLE EDGE read a paper before the Royal Statistical Society on January 19 entitled “The Demography of British Colonial Possessions”, in which some of the outstanding details to be found in Colonial medical reports were summarized. It was pointed out that the British Colonies comprise upwards of fifty distinct Governments, with territories exceeding an area of two million square miles, of which more than nine-tenths lies wholly within the tropics, inhabited by a bewildering medley of recces, religions, languages and customs. The bulk of the people of British tropical Africa are native-born Africans, but in British Malaya the Chinese outnumber the indigenous Malays, and in the British West Indies no traces of the original Carib inhabitants survive, the present population being composed of descendants of African slaves, East Indians, Europeans and other inter-racial mixtures. The Colonial medical reports contain records of population, births, and deaths, so far as these are known, and in addition survey the records of sickness in the Colonies with the view of discovering and removing the predisposing causes of various diseases. The incidence in different parts of the world of such diseases as malaria, helminthiasis, venereal affections, dysentery, sleeping sickness and tuberculosis were discussed by Major Granville, and the difficulties connected therewith commented upon. The public health services, wherever located, may be regarded as fighting organizations engaged in combating insanitary conditions, in raising defences against the invasions of disease, and in attempting to stave off the approaches of death. Without these services detailed sanitary knowledge cannot be acquired, and without such knowledge commercial and other development of the Colonial Empire must be precarious and costly in the face of unrealized menaces to life and health.