PORTALS OF ENTRY OF INFECTIOUS AGENTS. 177 



made the filthy farming customs of the Chinese the sub- 

 ject of special reports. It is scarcely necessary to 

 mention the way human excrement used as fertilizer is 

 dangerous, as it differs in no respect from fecal pollution 

 of water; nor that the chief danger comes from vege- 

 tables, berries, and salads which are eaten raw. 



Pollution of berries, etc., may also come from the 

 persons employed in gathering them. The people 

 engaged in this kind of labor, while they are on the one 

 hand drawn from the most densely ignorant and un 

 cleanest of foreigners, are on the other denied for weeks 

 the most primitive accessories of civilization. Whole 

 families, men, women, and children, in the early spring 

 begin a migration which starts where the season opens 

 soonest, and ends in the fall where it closes last. Dur- 

 ing this, the warmest part of the year, they live in the 

 fields in tents or covered wagons, working from sunrise 

 to sunset with only such conveniences as their tempo- 

 rary abiding-places afford. They ask very little in the 

 way of comforts and get less. A bath to most of them 

 is ordinarily obnoxious. From their bunks day after 

 day they go to their work in the dawning morning, 

 unwashed and uncombed, to return at night to sleep, 

 too exhausted to make an effort to be clean. Relief 

 from physiological emergencies is sought where they 

 work, and quickly too — for the remuneration is *^so 

 much the measure." Sickness often prevails in these 

 camps, typhoid fever, small-pox, scarlet fever, etc.. 



