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Rh next Colonial Surgeon (Dr. Menzies) as having been distinguished by more than average unhealthiness consequent upon the failure of the usual amount of rain. But the next year was positively disastrous. When Dr. Harland (the successor of Dr. Menzies) died of fever in the year 1858, it was noticed that he was the fourth Colonial Surgeon who had fallen a victim to the climate. His successor, Dr. Chaldecott, reported, as a novel appearance in the Colony, the outbreak of true Asiatic cholera and hydrophobia. Whilst insisting upon the urgent need of improving the sanitary condition of the Colony, repeatedly pointed out by his predecessors, Dr. Chaldecott stated that this first appearance of Asiatic cholera 'was, if not entirely owing to, at least fearfully aggravated and extended by, the neglect of proper drainage and cleanliness, the results of which must act with double force in a community so crowded together as that of Victoria, and in a climate so favourable to the decomposition of animal and vegetable products.' He reported that Asiatic cholera in Hongkong first attacked the worst lodged and worst fed part of the Chinese community, then some Indian servants, next the European seamen bath ashore and afloat and at the same time some of the soldiers of the garrison and the prisoners in the gaol, and that it finally, in three cases, attacked the higher class of European inhabitants of the Colony and in one of those cases proved fatal. The residents of Macao suffered at the same time from the disease and cases occurred among the Allied Forces at Canton and in some of the men-of-war in the River. The disease afterwards visited the East Coast, reached Shanghai and then raged with great virulence over a large part of the Japanese Empire.

The erection of waterworks was repeatedly mooted during this period and particularly in the year 1858. Sir J. Bowring publicly stated that some of the opponents of his Praya scheme (Members of Council) had openly avowed their purpose of swamping the surplus revenue, accumulating for Praya purposes, by diverting it to other and hitherto unauthorized public works, and that it was for this sinister purpose that the construction of