The enrollment in the University for the school year 1922–1923 is 4,839, so that in 10 years the attendance rose from 1,400 in 1911–1912 to 4,839 in 1922–1923, representing an increase of 237 per cent. The University has now 45 buildings of permanent materials.
The Santo Tomas University was the first to be established. It has the distinction of being the oldest university under the American flag, having been founded a quarter of a century before Harvard. It gives courses in law, medicine, pharmacy, civil engineering, philosophy and letters, and theology, and has about 700 students. The medium of instruction is the Spanish language.
Besides these two universities there is the National University with upwards of 4,500 students and the Manila University with almost 3,000. The presidents of the last two universities are Filipinos.
The overwhelming majority of the faculty in all the institutions of high learning in the Islands are Filipinos.
VII. SANITATION.—In sanitation the progress attained by the Philippines during the Filipinized government has also been rapid. The sanitary work is now controlled by a central bureau called the Philippine Health Service. With this centralization of activities health measures can be enforced more economically and more effectively than in previous years.
The municipalities are grouped into sanitary divisions, each of which is in charge of a competent official. With few exceptions the men in charge are qualified physicians. At the end of the year 1921, there were 307 sanitary divisions comprising 792 out of the 846 municipalities. In other words, nearly 94 per cent of the total number of municipalities in the Philippines form a part of these sanitary divisions.
Some of the important functions of the Philippine Health Service are as follows:
1. Control and supervision of all hospitals for dangerous communicable diseases, and the isolation of persons suffering from such diseases.
2. Control of sanitation of schoolhouses and premises, prisons and all other places for the detention of prisoners.
3. Establishment and maintenance of internal quarantine in times of epidemic and the systematic inoculation of the inhabitants with virus, sera, and prophylactics.