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.

Our difficulties were increased at the outset by the fact that many
foreign medical men working in the Far East good-naturedly ridiculed
our efforts to better conditions, claiming that in tropical colonies it
was customary to take only such steps as would safeguard the health of
European residents, and that it was really best to let the masses live
as they would, since orientals were incapable