For obvious reasons I investigated his domestic arrangements, finding that he was boiling drinking water, thoroughly cooking all food, and taking all usual and necessary precautions to prevent infection.
On returning to his house the first evening, after a short absence, I found the grounds decorated with lighted Japanese lanterns.

Supposing that the proverbial Filipino hospitality had risen above even such untoward circumstances as those which then existed, I asked the governor what the entertainment was to be.

In evident perplexity he replied that he had not planned to have any entertainment, and on my inquiring what the lanterns were for, said he had heard that they were good to keep away cholera germs! I have referred to the fact that the civil government inherited a fairly well developed epidemic of bubonic plague.

In 1901 this disease caused four hundred twenty-seven deaths, in 1902 it caused ten only, but the demands made on the sanitary force by the cholera epidemic which began in that year rendered it impossible to give to plague the attention which it otherwise would have had, with the result that in 1903 we had one hundred seventy-four deaths.

In 1904 there were seventy-eight; in 1905, forty-three; in 1906, seven; in 1907, none; and from 1907 until 1912, none.