Ateneo de Manila University • Loyola Heights, Quezon City • 1108 Philippines
Agents of Apocalypse, by De Bevoise
Review Author: David Keck
Philippine Studies vol. 45, no. 3 (1997): 431–433
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Fri June 27 13:30:20 2008
Book Reviews and Notes
Agents of Apocalypse Epldtmic Disease in the Colonial Philippines.
By. Ken De Bevoise. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Ken De Bevoise's Agents of Apocalypse: Epidemic Disease in the Colonial Philip pines is an extremely important bobk and ought to be widely read by those interested in Philippine Studies. Its subject matter-the complex historical ecology of disease in late nineteenth- and early twentiethqentury Philippines-may well come to inform not only the study of the past but also contemporary Philippine issues. The basic statistics reveal that people were dying on a phenomenal scale: during crisis mortality periods due to diseases in this era, the annual death rate soared from one person in forty to one in twenty-five, and in some years, the death rate even tripled. That newspapers today are filled with details of outbreaks of diseases and high-infant mortality rates suggests that De Bevoise's ri& historical presentation may yield significant lessons for contemporary problems.
While some other historians have noted the importance of rinderpest, or the great attention paid by colonial