We found exceedingly few competent Filipino physicians or surgeons in the islands.  This condition was due not to natural incompetence on the part of the Filipinos but to the previous lack of adequate educational facilities.  The government has established a thoroughly modern college of medicine and surgery, well housed, and provided with all necessary laboratory facilities.  It furnishes the best of theoretical instruction, while its students have every opportunity for practical work at the bedsides of patients in the government hospitals, all patients in free beds being admitted subject to the condition that they will allow their cases to be studied.

While there is still an evident tendency on the part of graduates of this school to feel that they know enough, and to desire to get to making money without delay, we are nevertheless managing to attract an increasingly large number of the more competent to the intern service of the Philippine General Hospital, where as the result of additional years of practical experience they become exceptionally proficient.

This institution, with its great free clinic, offers very exceptional facilities for practical instruction, and we have already trained some extremely competent Filipino physicians and surgeons.

As funds permit, hospital work is being extended to the provinces.  At Cebu a thoroughly up-to-date sixty-bed institution is now open.  A smaller one was established years ago at Baguio, where surgical work may be performed with great advantage on account of the rapidity with which convalescence occurs in the cool, pure mountain air, which also expedites the recovery of persons recuperating from wasting diseases.

A little more than a year ago a hospital was opened at Bontoc, the demand for accommedations being so great from the start that we did not even await the arrival of beds.  Sick Igorots were only too glad to lie on the floor if their needs could be ministered to.

It had previously been the custom of the wild men to kill chickens, pigs or carabaos in case of illness, in order to propitiate evil spirits, the kind and number of animals killed being of course determined by the wealth of the patients.  They have now satisfied themselves that quinine for malaria, salvarsan for yaws, and other effective remedies for common ailments are more useful and more readily obtained than was the helpful intervention of the anitos, or spirits of the dead, while the methods and results of modern surgery are a source of unending amazement and satisfaction to them.

The first surgeon to anesthetize a Kalinga became promptly and widely known as “the man who kills people and brings them to life again,” and the individual on whom he operated successfully, who chanced to be the most influential chief of the tribe, became his friend for life.  Indeed, the results of medical and surgical work for the wild men have been an important factor in bringing about and maintaining friendly relations with them.