The Philippines: Past and Present Volume I Part 41

Two things still greatly complicate the administration of justice in the Philippines.

The first is the dense ignorance of the people of the working cla.s.s who for the most part have failed to learn of their new rights, and even if they know them are afraid to attempt to a.s.sert them in opposition to the will of the _caciques_, whose power for evil they know only too well.

The other is the unreliability of many witnesses and their shocking readiness to perjure themselves. It is always possible to manufacture testimony at small expense. While the criminal libel suit brought against certain members of the staff of the newspaper _El Renacimiento_, which libelled me, was in progress the judge showed me the opinion of the two Filipino a.s.sessors [497] in one of the cases and told me that it was written by an attorney for the defence. I could not believe this, but a few days later an a.s.sessor in another of the cases called at my house, bringing a draft of the opinion of himself and his a.s.sociate which he sought to submit to me for criticism or modification, saying that I knew much more about the case than they did! He was nonplussed at my refusal to read the doc.u.ment, and left saying "_acqui tiene V. nuevo servidor_." [498]

Had I redrafted the opinion, as I might have done, my "new servant"

would have called later for a _quid pro quo_.

Some of the Filipino judges of first instance have proved weak in matters affecting the integrity of public domain and the protection of the public forests, but on the whole these officers have done rather surprisingly well. It must be remembered that the best men in the islands have now been appointed, and that another generation must come on before there will be available any considerable number of new candidates who are up to the standard of the present appointees.

CHAPTER XVI

Health Conditions

I had abundant opportunity to observe health conditions in the Philippines during the Spanish regime and they were shocking in the extreme. There were no provisions for the sanitary disposal of human waste even in Manila. If one had occasion to be out on foot at night, it was wise to keep in the middle of the street and still wiser to carry a raised umbrella.

Immediately after the American occupation some five hundred barrels of caked excrement were taken from a single tower in one of the old Manila monasteries. The moat around the city wall, and the _esteros_, or tidal creeks, reeked with filth, and the smells which a.s.sailed one's nostrils, especially, at night, were disgusting.

Distilled water was not to be had for drinking purposes. The city water supply came from the Mariquina River, and some fifteen thousand Filipinos lived on or near the banks of that stream above the intake. The water was often so thick with sediment that one could not see through a gla.s.s of it, and it was out of the question to attempt to get it boiled unless one had facilities of one's own.

Conditions in the provinces were proportionately worse. As a rule, there was no evidence of any effort to put provincial towns into decent sanitary conditions. I must, however, note one striking exception. Brigadier General Juan Arolas, long the governor of Jolo, had a thorough knowledge of modern sanitary methods and a keen appreciation of the benefits derivable from their application. When he was sent to Jolo, practically in banishment, the town was a plague spot to which were a.s.signed Spaniards whose early demise would have been looked upon with favour by those in power. He converted it into a healthy place the death rate of which compared favourably with that of European cities, thereby demonstrating conclusively what could be done even under very unfavourable conditions. No troops in the islands were kept in anything like such physical condition as were the regiments a.s.signed to him, and he bore a lasting grudge against any one inconsiderate enough to die in Jolo.

Everywhere I saw people dying of curable ailments. Malaria was prevalent in many regions in which it was impossible to secure good quinine. The stuff on sale usually consisted largely of cornstarch, or plaster of Paris. Fortunately we had brought with us from the United States a great quant.i.ty of quinine and we made friends with the Filipinos in many a town by giving this drug gratis to their sick.

Smallpox was generally regarded as a necessary ailment of childhood. It was a common thing to see children covered with the eruption of this disease watching, or joining in, the play of groups of healthy little ones.

The clothing of people who had died of smallpox was handed on to other members of the family, sometimes without even being washed. The victims of the disease often immersed themselves in cold water when their fever was high, and paid the penalty for their ignorance with their lives.

The average Spaniard was a firm believer in the noxiousness of night air, which he said produced _paludismo_. [499] Most Filipinos were afraid of an imaginary spirit, devil or mythical creature known as _asuang_, and closed their windows and doors after dark as a protection against it. Thus it came about that in a country where fresh air is especially necessary at night no one got it.

Tuberculosis was dreadfully common, and its victims were conveying it to others without let or hindrance.

A distressingly large percentage of native-born infants died before reaching one year of age on account of infection at birth, insufficient clothing, or improper food. I have many times seen a native mother thrust boiled rice into the mouth of a child only a few days old, and I have seen babies taught to smoke tobacco before they could walk.

Before our party left the islands in 1888, cholera had broken out at a remote and isolated place. A little later it spread over a considerable part of the archipelago. On my return in 1890 I heard the most shocking stories of what had occurred. Victims of this disease were regarded with such fear and horror by their friends that they were not infrequently carried out while in a state of coma, and buried alive. It became necessary to issue orders to have shelters prepared in cemeteries under which bodies were required to be deposited and left for a certain number of hours before burial, in order to prevent this result.

In Siquijor an unfortunate, carried to the cemetery after he had lost consciousness, came to himself, crawled out from under a ma.s.s of corpses which had been piled on top of him, got up and walked home. When he entered his house, his a.s.sembled friends and relatives vacated it through the windows, believing him to be his own ghost. They did not return until morning, when they found him dead on the floor.

I heard a well-authenticated story of a case in which all the members of a family died except a creeping infant who subsisted for some time by sucking a breeding sow which was being kept in the kitchen.

During the great cholera epidemic in 1882 it is said that the approaches to the Manila cemeteries were blocked with vehicles of every description loaded with corpses, and that the stench from unburied bodies in the San Lazaro district was so dreadful that one could hardly go through it.

Beri-beri was common among the occupants of jails, lighthouses and other government inst.i.tutions, as well as in certain garrisoned towns like Balabac.

In 1892 I found the wife of a very dear Spanish friend dying from an ailment which in the United States could have been promptly and certainly remedied by a surgical operation. I begged him to take her to Manila, telling him of the ease with which any fairly good surgeon would relieve her, and promising to interest myself in her case on my arrival there. To my utter amazement I found that there was not a surgeon in the Philippine Islands who would venture to open the human abdomen. The one man who had sometimes done this in Spain stated that it would be impossible for him to undertake it in Manila, on account of the lack of a suitable operating room, of instruments and of the necessary anaesthetist and other professional a.s.sistants. In fact, at the time of the American occupation there was not a modern operating room, much less a modern hospital, in the Philippines. Thousands upon thousands of people were peris.h.i.+ng needlessly every year for the lack of surgical intervention. A common procedure in dealing with wounds was to cover them with poultices of chewed tobacco, ashes, and leaves.

In many provinces the people were without medical a.s.sistance of any sort, and fell into the hands of native quacks who were little, if at all, better than witch doctors.

The most fantastic views were entertained relative to the causation of disease. In some towns it was vigorously a.s.serted that after a peculiar looking black dog ran down the street cholera appeared. In other places cholera was generally ascribed to the poisoning of wells by Spaniards or foreigners.

Cemeteries were not infrequently situated in the very midst of towns, or near the local supplies of drinking water. Conditions within their walls were often shocking from an aesthetic view point. As the area available for burials was limited, and the graves were usually unmarked, parts of decomposed bodies were constantly being dug up. It was the custom to throw such remains about the foot of the cross at the centre of the cemetery.

Military sanitation was also very bad. I was at Zamboanga when the wreck of General Weyler's expedition to Lake Lanoa began to return. There had been no adequate provision for the medical care of the force in the field, and the condition of many of the soldiers was pitiable in the extreme. Disabled men were brought in by the s.h.i.+pload, and the hospitals at Zamboanga, Isabela de Basilan and Jolo were soon filled to overflowing.

The lack of adequate sanitary measures was equally in evidence in dealing with cattle disease. Rinderpest, a highly contagious and very destructive disease of horned cattle, was introduced in 1888 and spread like fire in prairie gra.s.s. No real effort was made to check it prior to the American occupation, and it caused enormous losses, both directly by killing large numbers of beef cattle and indirectly by depriving farmers of draft animals.

When I first visited the islands every member of our party fell ill within a few weeks. All of us suffered intensely from tropical ulcers. Two had malaria; one had dysentery; one, acute inflammation of the liver, possibly of amoebic origin; and so on to the end of the chapter. I myself got so loaded up with malaria in Mindoro that it took me fifteen years to get rid of it.

Fortunately the American army of occupation brought with it numerous competent physicians and surgeons, and abundant hospital equipment and supplies, for the soldiers promptly contracted about all the different ailments to be acquired in the islands.

When I arrived in Manila on the 5th of March, 1899, I found that a great army hospital, called the "First Reserve," had been established in the old rice market. There was another sizable one on the Bagumbayan drive. A third occupied a large building belonging to French sisters of charity which was ordinarily used for school purposes.

In immediate connection with the First Reserve Hospital was a tent hospital where sick and wounded Insurgents were being given the best of care.

Field hospitals were promptly established as the troops moved out from Manila, and in connection with many of these Filipinos were given much needed medical and surgical help. The recipients of such kindly treatment were, however, prohibited by Insurgent officers from telling others of their experiences lest the hatred of Americans diminish as a result.

Smallpox had broken out among the Spanish soldiers in the walled city and was spreading badly when my friend, Major Frank S. Bourns of the army medical corps, was given the task of eradicating it, which he promptly accomplished. A little later the use of the Santa Ana church as a smallpox hospital was authorized, and sick Filipinos were carefully tended there.

The army promptly set about cleaning up Manila and waging war upon the more serious ailments which threatened the health of the soldiers and that of the public. The work was at the outset put under the direction of Major Edie, a very capable and efficient medical officer. Subsequently it was turned over to Major Bourns, who, on account of his intimate knowledge of Spanish, and his wide acquaintance with the Filipinos, was able to carry out many much-needed reforms, and in doing so aroused a minimum of public antagonism.

Upon the establishment of civil government Governor Taft was very desirous of retaining Major Bourns's services, but this did not prove practicable, as he desired to give up government work and engage in private business.

There was promptly created an efficient board of health made up of men of recognized ability and large practical experience. Its chairman was Major Louis M. Maus, commissioner of public health. The other members were Mr. H. D. Osgood, sanitary engineer; Dr. Franklin H. Meacham, chief sanitary inspector; Dr. Paul C. Freer, superintendent of government laboratories; and Dr. Manuel Gomez, secretary.

This board was promptly put upon its mettle. It had inherited from the army an incipient epidemic of bubonic plague in Manila, and the disease soon spread to Cavite and also to Cebu, then the second port of the Philippines in commercial importance. It also appeared in several provincial towns near Cavite. An effective campaign against it, inaugurated at this time, was never abandoned until it was completely eradicated in 1906,--a noteworthy result to achieve in a country like the Philippines.

On March 21, 1902, I was advised that two patients at San Juan de Dios hospital were developing symptoms of Asiatic cholera, and on the following day a positive laboratory diagnosis was made. Other cases followed in quick succession, and we soon found ourselves facing a virulent epidemic of this highly dangerous disease. At the outset the mortality was practically 100 per cent. Unfortunately, there was no one connected with the medical service of the islands who had had practical experience in dealing with cholera, and we had to get this as we went along.

At the time of the outbreak, Governor Taft was in the United States, Acting Governor Wright was in Leyte, the secretary of finance and justice was in j.a.pan, and there were present in Manila only the secretary of public instruction and the secretary of the interior. As the executive head of the government was absent, and there was no quorum of the legislative body, I of necessity arrogated to myself powers which I did not lawfully possess, appointing employees and incurring expenses without the usual formalities.

On the morning of March 22 I informed General Chaffee that four cases of cholera had occurred in Manila, and requested that an adequate military force be despatched to the valley of the Mariquina River to protect the city water supply from possible contamination.

This request was promptly acceded to, and the guard thereafter maintained proved adequate to prevent infection of the city water, although there are three towns on the river above the intake, and it was the custom of their people to bathe and wash their clothing in this stream. Many of the filthy surface wells of the city were filled as rapidly as possible, and those that could not be filled were closed.

The people, entirely unaccustomed as they were to any sanitary restrictions, believing that the disease was not cholera, and firm in their conviction that they had a right to do whatever they liked so long as they kept on their own premises, bitterly resented the burning or disinfection of their houses and effects, and the restriction of their liberty to go and come as they pleased, and in spite of the fact that the number of cases was kept down in a manner never before dreamed of at Manila, there arose an increasingly bitter feeling of hostility toward the work of the board of health. In fact, the very success of the campaign proved an obstacle, and we were a.s.sured that the disease could not be cholera, as, if it were, there would be a thousand deaths a day!

An educational campaign was immediately begun, and simple directions for avoiding infection were published and scattered broadcast. Distilled water was furnished gratis to all who would drink it, stations for its distribution being established through the city and supplemented by large water wagons driven through the streets. The sale of foods likely to convey the disease was prohibited. Large numbers of emergency sanitary inspectors were immediately appointed, and every effort was made to detect all cases as soon as possible. A land quarantine was established around the city, to protect the provinces.

In antic.i.p.ation of a possible extensive outbreak of contagious disease a detention camp capable of accommodating some twenty-five hundred people had been established previously on the San Lazaro grounds, and to this place were taken the cholera "contacts." A cholera hospital was opened near this camp, and the stricken were removed to it from their homes as speedily as possible, the buildings which they had occupied being thoroughly disinfected, or burned if disinfection was impracticable.

The bodies of the dead were at the outset either buried in hermetically sealed coffins or cremated. When the detention camp and hospital at San Lazaro threatened to become crowded, a second camp and hospital were established at Santa Mesa. At this latter place both "contacts"

and the sick were obliged to live in tents.