UNSOLVED HEALTH PROBLEMS PECULIAR TO THE 

 PHILIPPINES.' 



Bv Victor G. Reiser/ 



Many of the modern problems of hygiene and sanitation are the same 

 the world over, whether found in tropical or temperate zones. There 

 are certain characteristic phases of tropical hygiene and sanitation, how- 

 ever, which have received most gratifying attention in recent medical 

 literature and which we can not but interpret as showing a very general 

 interest and desire to make these portions of the world compare in 

 healthfulness with those heretofore believed to be more favorably situated. 

 However, in addition to these general problems, common to -all tropical 

 countries, there are additional difficulties and handicaps peculiar to each 

 country or people, which have required special consideration, 



It is the object of this paper not only to present the problems and 

 theories with which you are already familiar, for it is desirable that 

 you should know what we also are doing along these lines, but more 

 especially to put before you the peculiar conditions which have seemed 

 to hinder our more rapid progress and which are still blocking the way 

 to better sanitation and hygiene in the Philippine Islands. 



In general, we have first a poverty-stricken people with a poor physical 

 inheritance, a people strongly imbued with superstitions and habits the 

 antithesis of the simplest health doctrines and practices, a people lacking 

 ambition productively to till the fertile soil, a people the masses of 

 whom are apparently content in their ignorance and poverty and re- 

 signed to and uncomplaining of their many ailments. Work among 

 them is handicapped by the inaccessibility of many of the islands and 

 the nature of the roads, which, although being improved at a remarkable 

 rate, are yet unfit for travel in many instances during portions of the 

 year. It is further handicapped by the lack of a common language, for 

 as many as fifty or more dialects are spoken among the too or peasant 



1 Read at the first meeting of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine, 

 held at Baguio, P. I., March 14, 1910. 



2 Passed assistant surgeon, United States Public Health and Marine-Hospital 

 Service; Director of Health for the Philippine Islands; and Professor of Hygiene, 

 Philippine Medical School. 



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