Treaty between Japan and Corea 1876

This is an extract from the House of Lords parliamentary paper about the Treaty between Japan and Corea.

“Having heard that Mr. Miyamoto of the Guaimusho, had returned from Corea with the Envoys, we called upon him.  As it is not within the sphere of his duty to give any information upon purely official matters, we did not seek for this.  But the following observations made by him upon the state of the country and the habits and customs of the people, may prove interesting to our readers, and we therefore publish them.”

Some examples of the observations are; the soil is very poor as the pine trees are “crooked and ugly”, or the houses of the common people are about ten to twelve feet square and are “little better than dog kennels.”  The walls are made of stone and earth and the roofs are made of rice-straw thatch.  People sit on oiled paper on top of the compact earth floors, and they sit with straight legs.  The clothing is described “When approaching the land and at some distance the Coreans present the pretty appearance of snow herons, but on closer inspection they resemble the lazy priests of our own temples, whose garments may once have been white, but are so no longer.”

However, it was the last paragraph of the observations that caught my attention.

“We saw no wine-ships, “geisha” (singing girls), or the like.  It is said that all natural sons become priests, and the daughters prostitutes; but we could not discover whether this was actually the case.  We saw some Japanese hair-oil which they said were used by the women.  The custom of excluding women from the public gaze seems to exist in Corea as in China, and it is said that even among themselves visitors are not permitted to see the wife.  Thus we can give no description of the Corean Women.  Men do not use oil for the hair, which they pin up themselves.  We saw no public baths of hair-dressing shops, and we heard that the Coreans do not bathe.  In the warmer days of summer they go to the river or seashore to wash themselves; and in the hotel where we stayed there was not such a thing as a bath...This accounts for the filthy state in which the Coreans keep their persons, and for the dirty hue of their once white clothes.”

All this and a lot more can be found in the House of Lords parliamentary papers session 1876 vol. XX.

Wine tasting - hic!

I find it fascinating to look through the House of Lords parliamentary papers; you never know what you might find.  The reports are full of detailed information, they can include maps, plans, tables of all sorts of statistics and other interesting titbits.  I also love the use of the elaborate English language in these 19^th Century reports, the following paragraph is from the report on the wines tasted at Vienna Universal Exhibition of 1873 , by Henry Vizettelly, Esq.   

“The credit of the first attempt made to assemble together the wines of the world for the purpose of comparing and judging them is undoubtedly due to the French king, Philip Augustus, noted for his patronage of learning and his persecution of the Jews, a friend and enemy by turns of our own Coeur de Lion, and above all the grand consolidator of the regal authority in France, who sent forth his heralds, as the old chronicles tell us to summon, with due flourishing of trumpets, all the wines of the world to his royal and convivial table, that honour might be rendered them accordingly to their deserts.”

He goes on to explain that there has not been such a sample of wines tasted before at a universal exhibition and that most of the wine producing districts of the world were represented.

An example of this is “…the wines of the United States of America exhibited at Vienna were not remarkably varied, still they enabled one to form a fair estimate of the produce of a land which is destined to become, like Australia, one of the great wine-producing regions of the world.  There were merely 17 exhibitors, who, however, contributed among them as many as 82 specimens.”

 I can imagine this gentleman looking over his report, 158 pages in total about wine tasting, and wondering if he tasted every wine!  He also did a report on the beer tasting  at the same exhibition.

In total, there are 5 volumes about the Vienna Universal Exhibition of 1873, 4 in-depth volumes full of various reports and the last volume is full of maps and plans.  These are some photos of the plans that can be found in the 5^th volume.

 

All  the reports on the Vienna Universal Exhibition of 1873 can be found in the House of Lords parliamentary papers session 1874 vols. LXXIII to LXXVII.

 

Cow-dung and water

In appendix no. 1 of the Army Medical Department Report for the year 1871 there is a very interesting report about hygiene.  It has a section on the spread of cholera which mentions the latest discussion in Germany about that disease.

There are many views on how cholera is spread and Pettenkoffer replied to another doctor about his own changes of opinion “and believes such changes to be inevitable with everyone.  He rates our knowledge of Cholera low, but wishes to define his present views as carefully as he can.” 

I was particularly struck by the following incident 

 “On the 20^th November a man named Doolla died of cholera, as was subsequently ascertained. …the discharges had flowed on the earthen floor of the room in which he died; this floor had been cleaned, it was said and washed with cow-dung and water.  On the 26^th November, a burial feast was given in this room by his brother.  The food – rice, lentil, ghee, sugar and spices all of good quality – was cooked in this room on the previous day and night and the moist and hot rice was spread on an open mat laid on the earthen floor….The feast took place at midday on the 26^th November, and a few hours afterwards there was an outbreak of cholera among those who attended.”

The full report can be found in the Army Medical Department Report for the year 1871 in the House of Lords Parliamentary paper session 1873 vol. 34. 

Army Medical Department

Army Medical Department Report for the year 1871

House of Lords Paper 1873 vol. 34

Whilst working on the House of Lords Parliamentary Papers the overwhelming impression is the amount of detailed information in each report.  The amount of work to collate all the tables and material when there were no computers to help is quite staggering and must have been so time consuming.

In this report there are 6 pages of contents, starting with the health of the troops serving in the United Kingdom in 1871.

One example of this is “Of Infantry Regiments the 2^nd battalion 16^th, at Canterbury and Aldershot, had the highest ratio of admissions, the excess being chiefly in cases of febricula, bronchitis and tonsillitis, gonorrhoea, skin diseases and accidental injuries; the 82^nd Regiment at Portsmouth and Aldershot, the highest ratio of deaths.”

They are also detailed accounts of the health of the troops overseas such as China, Japan, India and Mauritius to name a few.

An account from Japan states “local diseases – there was a reduction in the prevalence of diseases of the circulatory and digestive systems, and a very marked one in cases of gonorrhoea, included with diseases of the urinary system; and there was a moderate increase in diseases of the respiratory and cutaneous systems.”

I particularly like the written examinations held at the Army Medical School, Netley.

Questions range from subjects such as medicine, surgery, botany, languages and military hygiene such as :

“What are the chief points to which you would direct your attention in examining whether the ground, round and under any habitation, is likely to be injurious to health?”

And “what are the methods of examining air?”  What amount of air should be given per hour to a healthy man?  On what principle is this rule based and how is the amount attempted to be given in barracks in England?”

This is just a tiny sample of the amazing and detailed amount of information that can be found in the reports from the House of Lords Parliamentary Papers.