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 assistance 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 asserted 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 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 c