Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 51).djvu/45

1801-1840] were approved by the governor on July 24 following. Folgueras, learning that certain immunities and advantages had been granted to Cuba and Puerto Rico for the encouragement of agriculture, requested from the home government similar help for Filipinas; the crown decreed an investigation of the subject, but the fulfilment of this was delayed from time to time, so that not until 1848 was even a definite statement and proposal for action in this direction made. (This was done by Rafael Díaz Arenas, one of the four members of the Economic Society – to which the investigation had been referred – who had been appointed to prepare the data for a report to the crown; "but we do not know whether the Society accepted his proposal, or whether it reached any definite conclusion on the subject.") In October of the year 1820, Manila was ravaged by a terrible epidemic of smallpox, which was especially fatal in the villages along the Pasig River; the corregidor of Tondo therefore issued an edict prohibiting the use of the river water. A public relief committee was organized to give the sick medical treatment and to furnish food to the poor; and the friars and the private citizens vied with the authorities in ministering to the victims of the pest. The medical men belonging to the ships anchored in the bay came to the city, and did all in their power to aid these benevolent efforts; but all these things only confirmed in the ignorant natives the fatal idea, already spread among them, that the disease was caused by the foreigners having poisoned the waters and used to this end the specimens of insects and other creatures