When Americans went there they found the Filipinos a race of semi-invalids. Those who had managed to survive the various scourges which were constantly sweeping the Islands were often infected with hookworm or similar parasites which sapped their vitality. Many of them were tubercular, and most of them were under-fed. The laziness which made several Filipino workmen equal to one American was much of it due to actual physical weakness. As a people, they are showing a marked improvement in energy and activity. It was from changes of this sort that the would-be benevolent anti-imperialists laboured to save them. Of course, a great deal remains for us to do. Half the babies still die before they are a year old. Only a beginning has been made in stamping out tuberculosis. The people have not yet been educated out of that fatalism which makes them prefer acceptance of evil to fighting it. But as fast as they learn English they come under our educative influence more and more. Dr. Richard P. Strong, whom we knew when we were in the Islands and who is now at the Harvard Medical School lecturing on tropical diseases, has done many notable things in various parts of the world. We all know about his wonderful work in the northern part of China, when the pneumonic plague[18] was raging there a few years ago, and still later his heroism among the typhus-stricken soldiers of Serbia. But we do not all know that, among other things, he has discovered a cure for a dreadful skin disease called yaws, which has been prevalent in the Philippines. A doctor in Bontoc cured a case with a single injection of salvarsan. The "case" was so delighted that he escaped from the hospital before a second injection could be given him, rushed home to his native village, and returned a day or so later with a dozen or more of his neighbours who were suffering from the same trouble. We were fortunate in traveling through the Islands with Dr. Heiser, who had entire control of the health conditions there for many years--in fact, until the Democratic administration. To him is largely due the practical disappearance of smallpox from the Philippines. When the Americans took over the country there were sometimes over fifty thousand deaths a year from this one disease. The change is the direct result of the ten million vaccinations which were performed by American officials. An effort was made to entrust the vaccinating to Filipino officials, but epidemics kept breaking out, and it was discovered that their work was being done chiefly on paper.