A Day in the Life of a Port Health Officer

These notes refer especially to an Assistant Port Health Officer, the Port Health Officer's duties being mainly administrative with a daily round of supervision to be certain that there is no hitch in the clockwork routine of the executive staff. And so let me introduce you to him (the A.P.H.O) at early dawn, for be it sun or rain, fine or foul, he is always at the jetty or on his launch at 5-30 a.m. He is always a cheery sort of biped before he has boarded a ship, more especially before boarding one like the Coromandel mail with its thousand or more Koringhee coolies. On arrival at the jetty, his first concern is the mustering of his staff which consists of