SCIENCE 



NEW YORK, JULY 29, 1892. 



RICE CULTURE IN JAPAN, MEXICO, AND THE UNITED 

 STATES FROM THE HYGIENIC POINT OP VIEW.' 



BY ALBERT S. ASHMEAD, M.D. 



One of the most important problems to be solved by the 

 Japanese medical profession is the application of a rational 

 and efficient hygiene to the culture of rice. This culture 

 lies, so to speak, at the very foundation of Japanese life. 

 When the rice crop is abundant Japan is well fed, healthy, 

 and content; when it fails, Japan droops and starves. Japan 

 almost lives on rice, and, consequently, a considerable part 

 of its population in employed in the culture of rice. This 

 large fraction of the people, at least, is exposed to all the 

 dangers which arise from a careless, imprudent, or slovenly 

 system of cultivation, and the dangers, as every one knows, 

 are very great, and, as every one knows, also, little is done 

 in Japan to obviate them. 



Rice culture is a watery business. Almost the whole 

 population of Japan forms around its island a fringe, fifteen 

 miles deep, leaving the interior a comparative desert. This 

 fringe is exceedingly populous. From one town to the other 

 you find scattered along the roads innumerable houses, so 

 that it is impossible for a stranger to say where one village 

 begins and the other ends; they dovetail into one another, 

 as it were. In the interior the rare population is concerned 

 with silk, lacquer, pottery, etc.; but in this fringe there is 

 scarcely anything but rice culture. The sea washes, pene- 

 trates, at times partly covers by its tides, the coast-land, and 

 furnishes the constant dampness necessary for the growth of 

 rice. The sea takes away multitudinous parcels of the rice 

 coast by forming swamps; and sometimes seems to be intent 

 on compensation by giving something of its own; thus, for 

 instance, a portion of the city of Tokio, now inhabited by 

 120,000 people, and which 200 years ago was under water, 

 may be considered as a gift of the ocean. 



The traveller in Japan is forcibly reminded of the cities of 

 Egypt, perched upon their elevated seats during the overflow 

 of their grand river. Here the inundation is an artificial 

 one; the waters of the innumerable swamps formed, either 

 by the sea or by the rivers, have been directed into the rice 

 fields all around the villages, and the latter appear like 

 islands. Even when the time of the flooding is ended, 

 shallow marshes remain everywhere, for the drainage is im- 

 perfect, to say the least. The stork, the king of the swamps, 

 is the national bird of Japan, semi-sacred, and, in olden 

 times, Mikados and Tycoons alone were allowed to eat of it. 



We must also, in an article on rice culture in Japan, take 

 into account the exuberant canal system of that country. 

 The trafB.c of the countivy is almost all on the canals, which 

 join one river to the other, and form a network of filthy 

 water over the whole extent of the densely populated zone. 

 I said of filthy water, for it contains all the surface drainage 

 of the large cities. Garbage ° is continually, or rather sys- 

 tematically, thrown into the deep, elaboratelj- built, stone gut- 



' Communicated to the Sel-I-Kwai, or Society for the Advancement of Medi- 

 cal Science In Japan. 



2 However it must not be forgotten that garbage in Japan is of a more simple 

 and less lurid kind than ours; it consists chiefly of the refuse of fish and vege- 

 table diet; no meat bones, no stale bread or other characteristics of our own 

 garbage. 



ters in which there is a perpetual flow of water, so that even 

 a regular eel fishery goes on in them. These gutters do the 

 work of our scavengers, without any cost to the city ; they 

 carry the city filth into the canals, and from the canals not 

 only to the sea but also into the rice fields. A river is no- 

 where allowed to pass without paying toll in the form of 

 public service; it enters into the sea only after it has washed 

 the cities which it met in its course. On its surface it carries 

 still more filth, if possible, than in its waters, for the con- 

 tents of all the public closets, in the streets and in the houses, 

 are daily carted to some boats and brought to the rice fields, 

 to serve as manure. There, at the rice field, the liquid ma- 

 nure is preserved in tanks until the proper time has come for 

 using it, after the drainage of the plantation, when the far- 

 mer feeds the growing plant by pouring over its roots with 

 a dipper. The solid part is applied to the soil before the 

 planting. 



From all this it appears that the culture of rice in Japan 

 is naturally a thorn in the side of the medical profession. 



The first evil resulting from this occupation in Japan is 

 impaludism, which is exceedingly frequent in all the rice 

 plains until the monsoons of the spring and the autumn 

 sweep away most of the paludic emanations. 



Typhoid fever and its complications, together with other 

 pernicious types, and the diseases caused by the distoma are 

 due to the infection of drinking water by their deleterious 

 system of manuring and draining. 



It has occurred to several leprologists that there may be a 

 connection between lepra and impaludism. It is a fact that 

 the more malarious the situation of a sea-coast the greater 

 is the number of lepers there. Moreover, it may be consid- 

 ered as a significant fact, that the first outbreak of leprosy is, 

 in a large number of cases, in China as well as in Japan, 

 preceded by one or several attacks of paludic fevers. It has 

 even been suggested that the origin of leprosy might be in 

 the malarious mud through which the rice laborers are con- 

 tinually wading. So much for Japan. 



The situation in Mexico, a country allied with Japan in 

 many ways, in climate, in constitution of inhabitants, irri- 

 gation system, etc., is aptly described by Dr. Nazario Lomas, 

 member of the Board of Health of the State of Morelos, 

 Director of the General Hospital, Cuernavaca (Morelos), 

 Mexico. His paper on the subject was read in Kansas City 

 (United States) before the American Public Health Associa- 

 tion, Oct., 1891. I give here the essential part of it: "Dur- 

 ing the last five yea,rs the cultivation of rice by irrigation 

 has become one of the chief elements of the prosperity of 

 this State (Morelos, Mexico). In course of these five years 

 we have seen the plantations increasing rapidly, while a 

 corresponding deterioration was observed in the salubrity of 

 neighboring towns. And how could it be otherwise, seeing 

 that the rice swamps are exposed to a mean temperature of 

 33 degrees centigrade in summer and 28 degrees in winter? 



"I think I need not here enter into any details about the 

 cultivation of rice; in a general way, quite sufficient for my 

 purpose, every one is acquainted with this subject. Let me 

 only remind the reader that there are two systems of culti- 

 vation: dry (on hills), and by irrigation. The latter has 

 two sub-divisions, irrigation by current and irrigation by 

 flooding. 



