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, [148] one reads of
cases truly inconceivable, and in the Ilustracion filipina, [149]
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.