ed, though data
can not be gathered to determine accurately the age at puberty. All the
Ilokano in Bontoc pueblo consistently maintain that girls do not reach
puberty until at least 16 and 17 years of age. Perhaps it is arrived
at by 14 or 15, but I feel certain it is not as early as 12 or 13 --
a condition one might expect to find among people in the tropics.

Pathology

The most serious permanent physical affliction the Bontoc Igorot
suffers is blindness. Fully 2 per cent of the people both of Bontoc
and her sister pueblo, Samoki, are blind; probably 2 per cent more
are partially so. Bontoc has one blind boy only 3 years old, but
I know of no other blind children; and it is claimed that no babes
are born blind. There is one woman in Bontoc approaching 20 years
of age who is nearly blind, and whose mother and older sister are
blind. Blindness is very common among the old people, and seems to
come on with the general breaking down of the body.

A few of the people say their blindness is due to the smoke in their
dwellings. This doubtless has much to do with the infirmity, as their
private and public buildings are very smoky much of the time, and
when the nights are at all chilly a fire is built in their closed,
low, and chimneyless sleeping rooms. There are many persons with
inflamed and granulated eyelids whose vision is little or not at all
impaired -- a forerunner of blindness probably often caused by smoke.

Twenty per cent of the adults have abnormal feet. The most common
and most striking abnormality is that known as "fa'-wing"; it is an
inturning of the great toe. Fa'-wing occurs in all stages from the
slightest spreading to that approximating forty-five degrees. It is
found widely scattered among the barefoot mountain tribes of northern
Luzon. The people say it is due to mountain climbing, and their
explanation is probably correct, as the great toe is used much as is
a claw in securing a footing on the slippery, steep trails during the
rainy reason. Fa'-wing occurs quite as commonly with women as with men,
and in Ambuklao, Benguet Province, I saw a boy of 8 or 9 years whose
great toes were spread half as much as those shown in Pl. XXV. This
deformity occurs on one or both feet, but generally on both if at all.

An enlargement of the basal joint of the great toe, probably a bunion,
is also comparatively common. It is not improbable that it is often
caused by stone bruises, as such are of frequent occurrenc