University of Manila. Naval School.
The university has many enemies and some arguers who do not oppose it because it is directed by Dominican friars, but because they believe the study of law inadvisable. This opinion is anti-liberal and does not merit refutation. Even if it did merit it, the moment would never be opportune for a democratic revolution, which even runs the danger of going too far in its generalizations, as we have already stated. The greater convenience of a school of medicine and surgery, professions in which the Indians would probably give better results than in the forum, might be maintained. But since true progress does not consist in destroying, but in reforming and improving gradually, we are inclined as the generality of those who have been in Filipinas, to the realization of the secularization which is demanded in regard to superior public instruction, and which appears to be the desire of the government at this time, by means of the establishment in the university itself of that school, to which the Dominican fathers, who have made the greatest sacrifices for their country, would not hesitate to offer themselves. And even if the study of pharmacy were added to it, it would also be convenient. That science must adjust itself to the conditions of the Indian, and there is an unquestioned need for it there; for, although its principal subdivisions have been studied by some religious, such as botany, mineral waters, etc., there is still much to do. It is the general opinion that the Philippine fields with their innumerable and unknown herbs offer remedies for all diseases, but the science is given up to chicanery, and the empiricism of the mediquillos. The Indians accept Spanish medicines under no consideration. Therefore, it is necessary to regenerate the class of the former by prohibiting intrusions into the field of the profession, and by obliging them to study it from its beginnings in the university of Manila under Spanish professors, who ought to be those of military health [Sanidad militar]—men who acquire great skill in the hospitals and come to be specialists in the diseases of the country. The suppression of some obstacles which still exist in regard to the admission of foreign professors will also be an excellent measure. In regard to pharmacy, of which there exist no regular establishments outside of Manila, Cavite, CebÚ, and, I believe, CagayÁn, great rigor must be exercised in removing from it abuses and ignorance which give place to the most grave consequences. As there exists no authoritative personnel, wandering peddlers easily obtain a permit from the superior government to add to their work the sale of drugs. At times they are subjected to light examinations by the subdelegate. The consequence is that the provinces are swamped with counterfeit and dangerous products when they are not objects of perfumery, which the poor natives swallow as chemical products. In Pampanga we have seen a preparation of lettuce or of some similar vegetable sold as a tailor’s chalk [jaboncillo de sastre], which was of more use for washing the hands than for modifying the nervous contractions of the muscles.
Hence, the intrusions of the mediquillo and of the matandÁ (the old man) who with true enchantments and superstitious remedies cures the poor sick people, cannot be combated with efficacy. In Batangas dead flies that were killed by the fresh paint of a saint have been prescribed, and brick dust where the mark of a foot had appeared to the native curas as a miraculous thing imprinted by the Virgin who was coming to adore a cross near by. The pills of Holloway and the products of foreign charlatanism reap their harvest.
Hence also, the poor parish priests have to serve as physicians and apothecaries in extreme cases. Very frequently the mediquillo when he sees that it is a case of exhaustion, absconds or disappears, and then what can a poor friar do at the bedside of a sick person who dies without human aid? Consequently, the literature of the convents has produced many [medical] works, some of them of merit, destined to be used as a vade mecum in these ordinary cases. Even notions of obstetrics (the science of childbirth) are given in some of those books, since there are theologues who counsel proceeding to the most risky operations in order to be able to baptize the fetus. In the Embriologia [i.e., Embriology] of Father Sanz,2 one reads of cases truly inconceivable, and in the Ilustracion filipina,3 a periodical which was published in our time, appeared articles in regard to the mediquillos and midwives, which by themselves alone would authorize a reform of those professions so interesting to humanity. In difficult childbirth it is very common for the operator to press down on the abdomen of the sick woman, and to have recourse to other proceedings similar to it. The first month after birth the Indian children pass in a perpetual martyrdom, for they are rubbed hourly with very hot cocoanut oil, a custom doubtless preserved from the woods, where in their savage state they make of the children a flexible serpent which escapes from the hand.
Since surgery, in spite of being an almost useless science in Filipinas, where the great agricultural and industrial works which cause mutilations and accidents do not exist, for the Indian when he works never does it with the enthusiasm and abnegation which we see in Europa, but very tranquilly and carefully looking out beforehand to what he exposes himself—surgery, we repeat, properly so called—does not exist where there are no Spanish operators. For the bite of a monkey, which would disappear in a fortnight by cauterization, we have seen so many plasters applied and so many waters from miraculous springs (among them a bandage soaked in holy water) that they have very likely killed the sick person, since he had suffered two long years when we left the province. If the oils and balsams from those oleaginous plants (and among them there are some truly wonderful) produced no effect, the mediquillo, losing his bearings, soon has recourse to the charms and devilments which bring a sick one to the grave.
There is another educational institution in Manila which is susceptible of great development and of producing vast advantages for the country, namely, the naval school. Poorly organized and almost always worse directed, it only graduates pupils with great pretentious, who aspire from the first moment to posts in the warships, where they are quickly confounded with the very least predicaments. If this institution on the other hand were well organized as a school of pilots, it could supply useful men to the great number of boats engaged in the coasting trade. The native sailor is bold even to folly in the ordinary accidents of navigation, but timorous and irresolute in exigencies, and absolutely lacks means to escape from them. Hence they go with the greatest impassiveness through those labyrinths of hidden rocks and reefs, which fill the sea of Mindoro and the Calamianes in pancos and paraos which scarcely can be used for the navigation of rivers and creeks. But at the first puff of a strong wind, which, although it does not break it, tears the helm from their hands at the first movement of that stormy sea where cataclysms are more frequent than ashore, the poor arraez [i.e., master] as the captain there is still called, harassed and disturbed, either kneels down with all his crew to invoke God, placing on the helm his antin-antin (amulet, a kind of scapulary which no Indian is without during these voyages, and which has more of paganism than Christianity), or takes refuge in the hatchway in order not to behold the dangers that he is running. If any Spaniard is in the boat, the command is assuredly given to him, although he understands less of sea-affairs than the said captain. That has happened more than once to all of us who have traveled much from one island to another, and surely not even in boats of a certain importance, almost brigantines, when the master is a TagÁlog, have we ever met with sea-compass, barometer, or glass, or any other of the instruments most indispensable for navigation.
This is enough to prove the importance which ought to be given to the naval school, whose organization must be very imperfect, since even yet its results are almost nil. It depends provisionally on the superior civil government, a circumstance which appears absurd to us. Like this there exist many things which we have neither time nor scientific capacity to unfold. It belongs to the government to do now what is proposed, namely, reform the public instruction of Filipinas.
