The Philippine 

 Journal of Science 



Vol. 22 FEBRUARY, 1923 No. 2 



NATURAL IMMUNITY TO INFECTION AND RESISTANCE 



TO DISEASE, AS EXHIBITED BY THE ORIENTAL, 



WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SIAMESE 



By Ralph W. Mendelson 



TWO TEXT FIGURES 



In applying- the principles of preventive medicine and hygiene 

 to conditions as they are found in the Far East the health officer 

 has not only to deal with a complex sanitary problem, which 

 in its intricacy consists of bad water supplies, unheard-of 

 methods of night-soil disposal, a complete inexistence of food- 

 distribution supervision combined with an unlimited disregard 

 for many other primary sanitary principles ; but, also, he has first 

 and last to overcome a prejudice, born of ignorance and super- 

 stition, which in its capacity to resist modern western theory and 

 practice is simply Cyclopean. One who has never visited this 

 part of the world, who has only second-hand knowledge of condi- 

 tions as they actually present themselves, has not the remotest 

 idea of what the actual state of affairs is. Parlor sanitarians 

 are uncommonly successful in devising ways and means to be 

 applied in combating the epidemic diseases, but practicing hy- 

 gienists not infrequently discover the impracticability of many 

 of the hard-and-fast rules as decreed, and in no place is this 

 so pronounced as in the Orient. 



My experience covers a period of five years. During that 

 time I have, consciously and unconsciously, had my sanitary 

 point of view considerably altered as regards this particular 



