﻿200 The Philippine Journal of Science im 



2. Aside from the Province of Misamis, whose salubrity can only be 

 determined from doubtful data, Abra is the most healthful and Nueva 

 Vizcaya is the most mortiferous of all. 



3. The provinces are classified according to their health status as follows : 

 healthful, moderately healthful, and most healthful; and under each class 

 are mentioned the different provinces. 



Later on, in 1889, Jose Solis ' and others edited in Manila 

 a pamphlet written by the professors of the medical corps, and 

 in this work the authors show that the diseases most prevalent 

 in the Jolo Archipelago are typhoid fever, dysentery, and malaria. 

 Other contributions worthy of mention are by Manuel Rogel 

 Lebres * and Pedro Robledo Gonzalez.^ The first author posi- 

 tively affirmed that in the Visayan provinces alone are found 

 10,000 lepers, while the latter asserted that the above figures 

 represent the number of lepers in the whole Philippines in 1880, 

 and explains the Japanese origin of the disease by the fact 

 that in the latter part of the eighteenth century about 100 

 Japanese lepers who were banished by the Mikado reached Luzon 

 and since their arrival leprosy spread rapidly all over the Islands. 

 In the three centuries of Spanish dominion, the above are the 

 only available data concerning the medical geography of the 

 Philippines. 



In the fifteen years of American regime, numerous and varied 

 articles have been published about the matter. 



Washburn * says : 



In the classification of climates based on the size and extent of masses 

 of land, oceanic, insular and continental, the climate of the Philippine Is- 

 lands is largely that of the first two cases, oceanic and insular. Nowhere 

 is the land distant from the seacoast more than 60 miles. The moderating 

 influences of the great bodies of sea water are therefore operative. On 

 account of climatic influences, the climate of the Philippines is widely 

 different from those of tropical Africa, South America and Asia in the 

 same latitude. As a rule, the smaller the island the more equable the 

 climate throughout the day and the year. The climate of the greater part 

 of the Philippine Archipelago is for this reason comfortable and hygien- 

 ically favorable for the treatment of many diseases. 



In the temperate zone an .insular, mild, or equable climate is frequently 

 a health resort. 



Observations in the Manila Observatory show that while the temperature 



• Contribucion al estudio estadistico-demografico-higienico de Jolo, Ma- 

 nila (1889). (Contribution to the study of vital statistics and hygiene of 

 Jolo.) 



'Leprosy in the Visayan Provinces (1897). 

 "Leprosy in the Philippines (1902). 



* The relation between climate and health with special reference to Amer- 

 ican occupation of the Philippine Islands. Read before the second annual 

 meeting of the Philippine Islands Medical Association in 1904. 



