The Disease most prevalent among the Filipinos is fever—especially in the spring: and although, in general, they may be considered a robust, enduring race, they are less capable than the European of withstanding acute disease. I should say that quite 50 per cent. of the native population are affected by cutaneous disease, said to be caused by eating fish daily, and especially shell-fish. It is locally known as Sarnas: natives say that monkey flesh cures it.
In 1882 Cholera morbus in epidemic form ravaged the native population, carrying off thousands of victims, the exact number of which has never been published. The preventive recommended by the priests on this occasion, viz., prayer to Saint Roque, proved quite ineffectual to stay the plague. A better remedy, found in the country, is an infusion of Niota tetrapetala (Tagálog, Manungal). From time to time this disease reappears. The returns given in the Official Gazette of March 2, 1904, Vol. II., No. 9, show the average monthly mortality due to Cholera, in the 20–1/3 months between March 20, 1902, and December 1, 1903, to be 5,360. Annually, many natives suffer from what is called Colerin—a mild form of Cholera, but not epidemic. In the spring, deaths always occur from acute indigestion, due to eating too plentifully of new rice. Many who have recovered from Cholera become victims to a disease known as Beri-Beri, said to be caused by the rice and fish diet. The first symptom of Wet Beri-Beri is a swelling of the legs, like dropsy; that of Dry Beri-Beri is a wasting away of the limbs. Smallpox makes great ravages, and Measles is a common complaint. Lung and Bronchial affections are very rare. The most fearful disease in the Colony is Leprosy.[16] To my knowledge it is prevalent in the Province of Bulacan (Luzon Is.), and in the islands of Cebú and Negros. There is an asylum for lepers near Manila and at Mabolo, just outside the City of Cebú (vide Lepers), but no practical measures were ever adopted by the Spaniards to eradicate this disease. The Spanish authorities were always too indifferent about the propagation of leprosy to establish a home on one island for all male lepers and another home, on another island, for female lepers—the only effectual way to extirpate this awful malady. In Baliuag (Bulacan), leper families, personally known to me, were allowed to mix with the general public. In Cebú and Negros Islands they were permitted to roam about on the highroads and beg.
The Insular Government has taken up the question of the Lepers, and in 1904 a tract of land was purchased in the Island of Culion (Calamianes group) to provide for their hygienic isolation. According to the Official Gazette of March 2, 1904, Vol. II., No. 9, the total number of lepers, of whom the Insular Government had obtained cognizance, up to December 31, 1903, was 3,343. Besides these there would naturally be an unknown number who had escaped recognition.
There is apparently little Insanity in the Islands. From the Report of the Commissioner of Public Health for February, 1904, it would appear that there were only about 1,415 insane persons in a population of over seven-and-a-half millions.
Since the American advent (1898) the Death-rate is believed to have notably decreased. The Report of the Commissioner of Public Health for 1904 states the death-rate per thousand in Manila to have been as follows, viz.:—Natives 53.72; Europeans other than Spaniards 16.11; Spaniards 15.42; and Americans 9.34. The Commissioner remarks that “over 50 per cent. of the children born in the city of Manila never live to see the first anniversary of their birthday.” The Board of Health is very active in the sanitation of Manila. Inspectors make frequent domiciliary visits. The extermination of rats in the month of December, 1903, amounted to 24,638. House-refuse bins are put into the streets at night, and an inspector goes round with a lamp about midnight to examine them. Dead animals, market-rubbish, house-refuse, rotten hemp, sweepings, etc., are all cremated at Palomar, Santa Cruz, and Paco, and in July, 1904, this enterprising department started the extermination of mosquitoes! In the suburbs of Manila there are now twelve cemeteries and one crematorium.
[1] We have several modern instances of similar volcanic disturbances creating and demolishing land surface, on an infinitely lesser scale—e.g., the disappearance of Krakatoa and the entire town and busy port of Anger in 1883; the eruption which swallowed up the whole inhabited Japanese island Torii Shima; the appearance of an entirely new island, Nii Shima (about lat. 25° N.), within the past twelve months; and, within the historical period, the apparition of the Kurile Islands.
[2] Vide Chap. [v]. By way of retaliation for the expulsion of Spanish missionaries from Japan in the l7th century, all the male Japanese above ten years of age were ordered to leave their settlements up the Lake. Under this order over 20,000 of them were expelled from the Colony. There was a Japanese temple existing (though not in use as such) in the suburbs of Manila up to last century, when Gov.-General Norzagaray (1857–60) had it destroyed.
[3] The Spaniards must have been quite cognisant of these rites, seeing that the Moorish invasion of Spain lasted nearly eight centuries, namely from the year 711 up to 1492—only a couple of decades before Legaspiʼs generation.