THE PHILIPPINE 



Journal of Science 



B. Medical Sciences 



Vol. Ill SBPTBMBBE, 1908 No. 4 



HEALTH CONDITIONS IN THE PHILIPPINES. 1 



By William S. Washburn. 2 



The health, conditions of any locality or country are only relative at 

 best, and not absolute. The opposite state to that of health is disease, 

 the principal causative factors of which are microorganisms, myriads of 

 which surround us as unseen friends or foes. The maintenance of health 

 appears to be dependent principally on an environment favorable to 

 normal growth and development. It is now realized that the observance 

 of the laws of personal, domestic, and public hygiene is the best protec- 

 tion against the invasion of the agencies of disease. Ignorance of these 

 laws destroyed the health or lives of nearly 100,000 Spanish soldiers in 

 Cuba in three years ; and in the civil war, for every man killed by bullets 

 there were two who died, and probably five whose health was permanently 

 destroyed, by camp diseases which are now known to be preventable. 



Instances of this character were formerly frequent and were not con- 

 fined to military operations in the tropics; it is certain that such ap- 

 palling death rates could have been greatly reduced by the intelligent 

 application of modem sanitary measures. It would appear that the 

 loss of Spain's tropical possessions is partly attributable to her failure 

 to cope successfully with the lurking enemy, disease. 



Under American administration, however, as early as 1903, 'the Sur- 

 geon-General of the United States Army was able to state that the admis- 

 sion rate in Cuba and Porto Bico of 1,300.24 per thousand and a death 

 rate of only 6.72 per thousand indicated that the troops on those islands 

 were as healthy as the Army at home in the United States during the 



1 Read at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Philippine Islands Medical As- 

 sociation, February 29, 190S. 



= Director of Civil Service, Philippine Islands. 

 73846 269 



