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 shipload, 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 grass.  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.