EXAMINATIONS OF STOOLS AND BLOOD. 507 



FOOD AND HABITS. 



The food of the Igorot consists mainly of rice and camotes, the latter 

 usually being planted in the same scmentera after the rice is harvested. 

 In some sections corn, beans and millet are grown, but rice is the. staple 

 food and is usually abundant in quantity, and the people are well fed 

 and nourished. The half-cooked meat of carabaos, dogs, pigs and fowls 

 is used to some extent, but usually in ceremonial feasts. The Igorots 

 of Benguet, eat dogs only when the animals have become thin as a result 

 of starvation, and in that province the consumption of these animals is 

 considerable. The men are great smokers and drink a liquor made from 

 fermented rice. 



The Igorots live in small pueblos of a few hundred souls and for the 

 most part their houses are low and provided with earth floors. The 

 clothing of the men, after the age of puberty, consists of a breechcloth, 

 often used only as an apron. They frequently carry a blanket to use as 

 protection against the cold. The women wear a strip of bright-colored 

 material arranged like a short skirt, reaching from waist to knee, but 

 they frequently work in the fields entirely nude. In both sexes the feet 

 are always bare and opportunities for infection with parasites through 

 the skin while on the trail, in the village or in the rice field seem ex- 

 cellent. Doubtless the chances for infection per os with food, water 

 and soiled hands are equally good. Since many of the Igorots go as 

 cargadores to the lowlands, distant not over 20 miles from Baguio, 

 some of the intestinal parasites they harbor may have been acquired there 

 rather than in the hills. 



EXAMINATIONS OF F^CES. 



During a visit to Baguio by two members of the Board for the Study 

 of Tropical Diseases, an examination was made of stools and blood of 119 

 apparently healthy adult Igorot laborers. Of these 56 were working for 

 the quartermaster at Camp John Hay and the remainder were employed 

 by the Bureau of Public Works of the Civil Government. 



In all the stool examinations three cover-glass preparations of fseces in each 

 case were completely looked over before recording the results and in some in- 

 stances where no ova were then found a still further search subsequently was 

 made. By such a method we feel sure that we discovered the great majority of 

 the vermicular infections, but undoubtedly even with this routine a few cases 

 of mild uncinariasis were overlooked. No effort was made to find amoeba? since 

 all of the specimens when received were several hours old and at a low 

 temperature. 



Among our 119 Igorots, 92.5 per cent of the whole had the ova of 

 some intestinal parasite in the evacuations. Ascaris lumbricoides was 

 the most commonly observed, 73 per cent of those examined showing eggs 

 of this nematode. Next came Trichocephcdus dispar, with an infection 

 rate of 60 per cent, then TJncinaria with 29 per cent, and last of all Tcenia 



