by ARTHUR DE CARLE SOWERBY
IN MANY ways a city is like a human body. Not only does it need feeding, it also is necessary to its health that all waste products should be disposed of. In a great city like
Shanghai the latter work is part of the functions of the Public Health and Public Works Departments. When anything interferes with this work the health of the community is soon impaired. The accumulation of waste products causes the outbreak of disease, rapidly spread by various agencies, especially flies, which under such conditions increase enormously in numbers. Not only does garbage and human and animal ordure have to be disposed of, but
also the bodies of the dead, which, in the case of a city, must be considered in the light of waste products. If not properly dealt with these may soon become an even greater menace to the health of a community than decaying refuse.
Last autumn and winter, with a war raging all round the International Settlement and French
Concession in Shanghai, the means of disposal of both refuse and human corpses, of which
there was an enormous increase above normal, were seriously curtailed. The difficulty was further increased when Japanese forces completely encircled the Settlement and Concession, and the war moved westward.
The Soochow Creek, one of the main channels along which ordure and garbage was carried away from the dry, was blocked. Also there were no means left of getting rid of the city's dead, which accumulated in various vacant lots within the city limits. In the Hongkew and Yangtzepoo areas north of the Soochow Creek, in the Hungiao and other areas west of the Shanghai-Hangchow Railway line and in the Chapel area the bodies of the large numbers of people killed in the hostilities were for the most part left where they fell. This was also the case with the numerous carcases of animals that were killed.
Thus the Public Health and Public Works Departments of both the International Settlement and French Concession were faced with an unprecedentedly difficult and stupendous task in disposing of the city's waste products, human and otherwise. That they have succeeded in that task in the face of so much difficulty is greatly to their credit. It is also greatly to the credit of the Chinese members of the community that they have agreed to abandon their age-
old customs and beliefs in regard to the disposal of their dead and allowed the latter to be cremated instead of insisting on their being buried. This has enabled the Public Health Department satisfactorily to dispose of some tens of thousands of dead bodies. Those of the International Settlement have, since January when the work started disposed of 34,801 bodies.
It seems to be the popular belief that the majority of these were the bodies of people killed during the hostilities and salvaged from the war-stricken areas. This, however, is not the case. Such bodies only numbered some three thousand or so. The remaining 31,801 corpses dealt with were those of people who had died in the Settlement area during the hostilities and could not be buried, and of those who have died in the Settlement during the past months since hostilities ceased in this area.
It may be noted that the Settlement authorities are still experiencing much difficulty in disposing of the city's garbage and ordure, being hampered by restrictions placed on the free transport of such material along the Soochow Creek and other channels away from this city. Epidemics of cholera and other infectious diseases have broken out in the Settlement and Concession, and the health authorities are busily engaged with inoculation campaigns, The
Japanese military forces in and round Shanghai are also similarly engaged, and have issued regulations preventing people entering the areas under their control who can not produce certificates to the effect that they have been inoculated against cholera. The cholera epidemic could be much more effectively combatted, however, if better cooperation were given the Public Works Departments in the carrying away of the city's garbage and ordure along the channels used in normal times by the removal of present restrictions.