Identifier: puertoricoitsres00ober (find matches)
Title: Puerto Rico and its resources
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Ober, Frederick A. (Frederick Albion), 1849-1913
Subjects: Natural resources
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and Co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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the woods, whence it emerges in bands of halfa dozen or more and preys upon sheep, pigs, andcalves. It has never been known to attack man,but might, when pressed by hunger, prove danger-ous to children. While on the subject of things to be avoidedit may be well to take cognizance of the prevalentdiseases of the island. There are fevers, to be sure,but more a resultant of local causes than from thehot and humid atmosphere. Few of the coast townsare afflicted with yellow fever, which is almost un-known in the interior, and endemic in San Juan,the capital, only because the most ordinary rulesof sanitation have been notoriously neglected. Anofficer of the United States army, returned fromPuerto Eico, declared in an interview that, whilethe island is a paradise at certain seasons of the year,the climate is almost entirely devoid of recuperatingproperties during the months in which the tropicalfevers prevail, which are embraced in the rainyseason. But worse than this is the total disregard
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NATURAL HISTORY, GAME, INSECT PESTS. H5 of the natives for health-giving sanitary conditions.In the close back yards of the residences and evenof the best hotels of Ponce, the second city in size,may be seen piles of rubbish and filth lying withina few feet of the cisterns from which the water sup-ply is obtained. Cholera, dysentery, diarrhoea, are possible,probable—the first-named disease carrying offthirty thousand people in 1855—and are mostlyconsequent upon eating unripe fruit, drinking badwater, or the violation of ordinary hygienic rules.But as for boiling all water before drinking (as wasadvised by the sanitarians of our army in Cuba),keeping out of the sun, and never walking or ridingat mid-day, etc.—these precautions are not neces-sary; at least the residents do not think they are,and many of them live to a green old age. But itis unsafe to expose yourself to rains, without oppor-tunity for quickly changing, at least, the undergarments, to wet the feet without soon afte

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