香港醫學博物館 Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences

In July 1894, Plague swept through Hong Kong, while Taipingshan was hit the hardest with 3,500 people killed over the epidemic. The Swiss-born bacteriologist Dr. Yersin was sent to Hong Kong to investigate the source of the epidemic, and he is the first person to identify the pathogen of the disease. Later, he recognized the importance and necessity of having a formal laboratory to continue his investigation, thus to eradicate the continuous outbreak of Plague from wiping out the vast, dense population. The then government promised him to establish a medical institute for his investigation.

This is the first bacteriological institute built for the public health control, aiming to conduct bacteriological examinations to contain the widespread of Plague in Victoria, and later also functioned as a base of vaccine development and production under the same premises.

In order to facilitate the assessment of plague transmission, the then government proactively hired senior students and graduates from the Hong Kong College of Medicine to assist the tasks delivered by the government bacteriologists. Their job duties include mice dissections, and data collection of both the infected and non-infected mice. Those dead mice in dissections were gathered by the citizens in the rat bins, and they would be collected twice a day. If the results of the dissected rats were confirmed infected, relevant officials would trace the routes of transmissions utilizing the number written on the bins and arrange mass cleansing for the sake of disinfection.