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 contracted about all the
different ailments to be acquired in the islands.
When I arrived in Manila on the 5th of March, 1899, I found that a
great army hospital, called the "First Reserve," had been established
in the old rice market. There was another sizable one on the Bagumbayan
drive. A third occupied a large building belonging to French sisters
of charity which was ordinarily used for school purposes.
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