A short time since we had a strong demand from Iloilo for an American district health officer.  I made the usual suggestion and got a written request that there be sent to Iloilo a district health officer “after the style of the district health officer of Cebu.”  If Dr. Pond’s nationality may be considered a part of his style, then this was a request for an American, otherwise not!

With rather shocking frequency, Filipinos who must be examined for leprosy or some other dangerous communicable disease strongly insist that the examination be made by an American bacteriologist rather than by one of their own countrymen.

In connection with recent election troubles two men were wrongfully denounced as lepers.  In several instances perfectly sound people have been thrust among lepers who were being taken on board steamer for transfer to Culion.  This grievous wrong was committed by their enemies under cover of darkness, and in the confusion which attends the embarking of a number of people in a heavy sea.  The reason why the services of Americans are often specially requested for diagnostic work is not far to seek!

It is a significant fact that our greatest success in establishing satisfactory provincial sanitary conditions has been achieved in certain of the “special government provinces,” where the people are under the very direct control of American officials.

There is not a regularly organized province in the Philippines in which the towns are as clean as are those of Mindoro, where, until recently, we have never had a resident district health officer.

I believe that nowhere in the tropics can there be found native towns which are cleaner or more healthful than are those of Bukidnon, inhabited in some instances by people who have literally been brought down out of the tree-tops within the last two or three years.  We have never had a resident health officer in this subprovince.

I mention these facts not as an argument against health officers, but as a proof of what can be done without them by intelligent Americans vested with proper authority.

It has given me especial pleasure to see the fundamental change which has come about in public sentiment relative to medical, surgical and sanitary work.  At the outset sanitary inspectors and vaccinators carried on their work at serious risk of personal violence.  Indeed, several of them were killed.  Incredible tales were believed by the populace, with the result that cholera victims sometimes had to be taken to the hospital by force.  In later years it has been by no means unusual for them to come in voluntarily and request treatment.

General hospitals were in the old days regarded as places where people so unfortunate as to have no homes to die in might go to end their days.  It was almost impossible to get any other class of persons into them.

Now we constantly turn away deserving patients from the Philippine General Hospital because of lack of room.  The common people are flocking to it in rapidly increasing numbers.  We even have “repeaters,” and persons who drop in just to get a comfortable bed and a bath while waiting for an examination which will inevitably show that there is nothing wrong with them.