Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/220

little more so during this year than in preceding years. The deaths from this cause constituted 26.8 per cent of all the deaths, or somewhat more than one-fourth. These two causes, cholera and malarial fevers, caused nearly three-fifths of all deaths. Dysentery and diarrhea together caused 69 out of each thousand deaths, and was third in rank of fatality. The fourth disease in fatality was tuberculosis, whose victims numbered 66 out of every thousand, and the victims of smallpox, which raged in many parts of the islands during the year, were nearly as numerous, numbering 34 out of each thousand. The victims of beri-beri, a disease which is peculiar to the brown and yellow people, due probably to insufficient nutrition, numbered 13 out of every thousand, and diseases of the stomach caused 12 deaths per thousand. No other disease caused as much as 1 per cent of all the deaths. Puerperal septicemia, bronchitis, typhoid fever, diphtheria, croup, and meningitis each had a few victims, but in each case less than 1 per cent.

These figures are in strong contrast with those which prevail in the United States. In that country the most fatal of all diseases is commonly tuberculosis, which is usually credited with a little over one-tenth of the deaths. Next to that is pneumonia, in a nearly equal proportion. This latter is well-nigh unknown in the Philippines, its victims numbering in 1902 only one in a thousand of the deaths.

In the United States dysentery and diarrhea together carried off about 4.4 per cent, only two-thirds the proportion in the Philippines, which was 6.9 per cent, while heart disease, which is almost unknown in the Philippines, caused 6.7 per cent of all deaths in the United States. Typhoid fever is vastly more prevalent and deadly in the United States than in the Philippines, its victims numbering 3.4 per cent of all deaths in the United States, while in the archipelago the number was trifling. It is much the same with meningitis, which in the United States carried off 2.5 per cent. Malarial fevers, prevalent as they are in some parts of the United States, are seldom fatal there, only 1.4 per cent of all the deaths being due to this cause. Kidney diseases, old age, apoplexy, and many other diseases which claim numerous victims in the United States were either unknown in the Philippines or claimed very few victims.

Nearly half the parcels of occupied lands are less than one hectar (2.471 acres) in size, while thousands of tracts, one-fifth of the total number, contain less than 1,075 square feet. These small parcels of land, many of them no larger than ordinary kitchen gardens in the United States, are resided upon by, cultivated by, and contribute materially to the subsistence of their owners or occupants, and the presentation of agricultural statistics for the Philippines would be extremely faulty and incomplete were they not included.

The people of the Philippines are extremely gregarious; the isolated farmhouse, so familiar in rural sections throughout the United States, is practically unknown in these islands, whose inhabitants almost universally live in communities and largely subsist on such products of the soil as can be cultivated or gathered from wild growths in the immediate vicinity of their dwelling places.

This custom of herding together is not due alone to the social, company-loving disposition of the people. It has been rendered necessary by the ladronism and the raids of Moros that prevailed throughout the islands for centuries.

This has been one of the greatest obstacles in the way of agricultural de-