This quarantine service kept the Philippines free from bubonic plague for seven years, and has repeatedly prevented the entry of pneumonic plague, that most deadly of all known diseases.

A peculiar and shockingly disfiguring disease known as yaws occurs somewhat infrequently in the Philippine lowlands and is very prevalent in a number of places in the highlands.  In many ways it resembles syphilis, and indeed at one time was considered to be syphilitic in its origin.  Doctor Richard P. Strong, of the Bureau of Science, made the very important discovery that salvarsan is an absolute specific for it.  The effect of an injection of this remedy closely approaches a miracle in medicine.  In five or six days the condition of the patient begins to improve rapidly.  By the end of the second week his horrible sores have healed.

It was with this remedy that we began our health work among some of the wilder head-hunters of northern Luzon.  Think of the advantage of being absolutely certain of curing such an ailment in every case, and think of the gratitude of poor wretches, undergoing untold suffering, when they were almost immediately relieved!

Soon after this use for salvarsan was discovered, I caused a liberal supply of it to be sent to the Bontoc Hospital.  For some time we were unable to persuade any victims of yaws to undergo treatment, but finally we found one at Barlig who was guilty of a minor criminal offence, arrested him, and took him to Bontoc.  Instead of putting him in jail there, we sent him to the hospital for treatment.

At first he complained bitterly that we were putting no medicine on his sores.  Then the remedy began to work and he decided it was “strong medicine.”  By the tenth day he was running around town joyfully exhibiting his rapidly healing body to every one who would look at it.  On the fourteenth day he suddenly disappeared, to the deep regret of the medical men, who had hoped that they might keep him as an example of what could be done, and thus persuade others to undergo treatment.  A few days later, however, he reappeared with thirteen victims of yaws from his home town, having meanwhile twice covered on foot the great distance which separates Barlig from Bontoc, and assembled and brought in his fellow-sufferers.

As we have seen, the people of Manila were formerly supplied with impure drinking water from the Mariquina River, and were therefore in constant danger of infection with cholera and other deadly diseases.  At a cost of some $1,500,000 we have given the city a modern water system, the intake of which is far up in the hills above the last village.  The annual deaths from ordinary water-borne diseases exclusive of cholera have fallen from 3558—­the average number at the time the new system was introduced—­to 1195.  Recently a leak in the dam, which necessitated temporary resumption of the use of the Mariquina River water, was immediately followed by a marked increase in the number of deaths from such diseases, thus conclusively demonstrating the fact that we were right in ascribing the previous reduction in deaths to a better water supply.