They get down
with fever, lose their appetite, neither know the value of nor have
the medicines of civilization, their minds are often poisoned with
the superstitious belief that they will die -- and they do die in
from three days to two months. In February, 1903, three cargadors
died within two weeks after returning from the coast.
Measles, chicken pox, typhus and typhoid fevers, and a disease
resulting from eating new rice are undifferentiated by the Igorot --
they are his "fever." Measles and chicken pox are generally fatal to
children. Igorot pueblos promptly and effectually quarantine against
these diseases. When a settlement is afflicted with either of them it
shuts its doors to all outsiders -- even using force if necessary;
but force is seldom demanded, as other pueblos at once forbid their
people to enter the afflicted settlement. The ravages of typhus and
typhoid fever may be imagined among a people who have no remedies
for them. The diseased condition resulting each year from eating new
rice has locally been called "rice cholera." During the months of
June, July, and August -- the two harvest months of rice and the one
following -- considerable rice of the new crop is annually eaten.
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