440 KDITOEIAL. 



My attitude is that the people should be left alone so far as concerns 

 matters of minor importance and that we should concentrate our efforts 

 on the obtaining of large results from the really fundamental measures 

 we now have under way. The people have now begun to be influenced 

 by those of their number who are educated in hygiene. We do not need 

 to go back farther than 1902 and 1903 in order to note a striking change. 

 At that time the method universally employed in combating cholera was 

 to hold religious processions, but we have patiently instructed the people 

 in hygiene and since 1905 religious processions have been regarded as 

 almost a negligible factor in preventing the spread of this disease. This 

 result is one of very great importance. "We should attempt to make 

 effective measures which will reach and influence thousands rather 

 than those which will reach tens. 



Sir Allan Perry, Principal Civil Medical Officer, Ceylon: I wish to 

 congratulate the gentleman on his paper. He naturally expects condi- 

 tions to improve, and he regrets that after an absence of some years he 

 comes back and finds them the same as when he left. My observations 

 have been made in places that have been under the control of our govern- 

 ment for one hundred years, and the conditions we encountered are very 

 much the same there as they are here. It seems to me that he desires 

 to go too fast. We can not alter the condition of the people simply by 

 making laws. They will not observe them, but it is to be hoped that by 

 education in modern sanitary measures they can be persuaded to bring 

 about improvements of themselves. One more thing has struck me, 

 and that is the influence of heredity on the condition of a people new to 

 modern ideas. 



Dean C. Worcester, Secretary of the Interior and Member of the 

 Philippine Commission, Manila: There is one practical query which 

 suggests itself in connection with Dr. Jackson's recommendation that we 

 now proceed to carry out sanitary regulations by force. Can this be done 

 in actual practice, or is the program which he outlines too ambitious ? 



A short time ago there was submitted to me a remarkable series of 

 health ordinances intended to apply to the Igorots of the Province of 

 Benguet. They were drawn up by an American health officer residing at 

 Baguio who had obtained copies of the sanitar}- ordinances of the city of 

 Manila and had j)ersitaded the Igorot township council of Baguio to 

 pass many of the most important of them and was attempting to enforce 

 them among the wild people. 



One must know these people in order fully to appreciate the absurdity 

 of such an attempt. The ordinances contain specific provisions as to the 

 construction and location of water-closets, when in point of fact no 

 Igorot in Benguet Province has such a thing, if indeed there is any one 

 of them who has ever heard of their existence. If an Igorot desired 

 to dig a well it was made incumbent upon him to send to Manila and 

 get the Director of Health to approve the site selected. It was necessary 



