Jose Protacio Rizal Mercado Alonso Realonda or better known as Jose Rizal was described as a “polymath” with his ability to master various skills and subjects. His German friend, Dr. Adolf Meyer, described him as “stupendous.” He was a historian, educator, linguist, playwright, journalist, sculptor and a farmer. He had varying degree of expertise in architecture, cartography, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, economics, dramatics, martial arts, fencing and pistol shooting. He was also a Freemason.
And lest we forget, the country’s national hero, who is celebrating his 150th birth anniversary this year, was a doctor – an ophthalmologist. Dr. Jose Rizal was a health worker.
Health Worker
Rizal was born on a cold Wednesday night of June 19, 1861 in Calamba, Laguna, after a long and difficult labor of her mother, Dona Teodora Alonzo. At the age of 3, he learned the alphabet from his mother; at 5, while learning to read and write, he already showed inclinations to be an artist. He astounded his family and relatives by his pencil drawings and sketches and by his moldings of clay. At the age 8, he wrote a Tagalog poem, "Sa Aking Mga Kababata," the theme of which revolves on the love of one’s language. He started formal schooling at the age of 9 in Biñan where he learned Latin and Spanish. He had an extraordinary capacity for language and ultimately he spoke 22 languages and dialects.
In 1872, at the age of 11, he attended secondary education at the Ateneo Municipalidad de Manila where he stayed for five years and was a star pupil. Later he moved to the University of Santo Tomas and from 1879 to 1882, he studied agriculture, surveying, philosophy and letters. Upon learning that his mother was going blind, he decided to study medicine specializing in ophthalmology. But he did not complete his medical studies, claiming discrimination by the Spanish Dominican friars against the native students.
In 1882, at the age of 21, Rizal went to Spain to pursue his medical studies. Here, he became a Master Mason in Acacia Lodge No. 9 in 1884. He later moved to France where he became a specialist in diseases of the eye. He also found time to join a French Masonic Lodge during his sojourn in France. In 1884, Rizal completed licentiates in medicine and philosophy and letters at the Central University of Madrid. The licentiate is an undergraduate degree similar to the American bachelor's degree but with a more vocational focus. Further medical education was not required to call oneself a physician or to practice medicine at that time. However, one could obtain a doctoral degree, similar to a contemporary American doctoral degree, after passing examinations and writing an approved thesis.
In 1885, Rizal went to Germany to study ophthalmology. Although Rizal completed a thesis for his doctorate in medicine, he did not technically receive this degree, since he did not appear to read his thesis aloud as required by the Central University of Madrid. Reading his thesis in Madrid would have required an additional trip to Spain, which Rizal could not afford. Instead, he mailed his thesis to the university and hoped for its acceptance in this manner.
In 1887, Rizal completed his eye specialization under the renowned professor, Otto Becker. There he used the newly invented ophthalmoscope (invented by Hermann von Helmholtz) to fulfill his lifelong dream of caring for his mother's eyesight.
According to a paper by Dr. Tracy B. Ravin published in the “Archives of Ophthalmology” in March 2001, Rizal practiced ophthalmology, mainly in Calamba (August 1887-February 1888), Hong Kong (November 1891-June 1892), and while in exile in the town of Dapitan (July 1892-July 1896). His specialized skills brought him fame, and patients often traveled long distances to seek his care.
Rizal was in Calamba from August 1887 – February 1888 and may have began a series of operations on his mother there, possibly performing an iridectomy as a preliminary to cataract extraction. In Hong Kong in 1892, he successfully removed the cataract from his mother's left eye. Several months later, he sent her glasses with instructions to cover the right lens until he could operate on that eye. Two years later, at Dapitan, he extracted the right cataract. He was dismayed by her postoperative course, however, as she disobeyed his instructions and removed the bandages prematurely. He learned a lesson on the difficulty of taking care of family members.
Ravin, in her paper, quoted documents that Rizal may have wrote, “I have operated on mother with much success and she could see with much clearness immediately after. The post-operative course went well for three days, but encouraged by this, she did not follow my instructions and she got up and lay down alone, removed and put back the eyepad, always telling me that nothing was going to happen until her eyes became so inflamed (she suspected that during the night she received a blow... The operative wound gaped, the iris prolapsed and now there is violent inflammation. Nothing can quiet her and she reads and goes to bright lights and rubs her eyes... Now I can understand why it is prohibited for one to treat members of his family.”
Experiences like this one may have formed the basis for the modern standard that surgeons should not operate on their immediate family. It has been said, however, that Rizal really only had two patients – his mother and his country – and his dedication to both was clearly remarkable, Ravin concluded in her paper.
National Hero
During his studies in Europe, Rizal was also working on his first highly celebrated novel, "Noli Me Tangere" in Spanish. The title is Latin for "Touch Me Not."
In this novel, Rizal exposed conditions so sensitive in the Philippines, that they could not be touched by anybody. He unfolded a shocking tapestry of the Philippines that made his story the most influential political novel of that country in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Noli received heavy criticisms from the friars and was described as “heretic, impious, scandalous, unpatriotic and subversive to public order”
Rizal returned to the Philippines shortly after his book was published but he was warned by his relatives and the Spanish governor-general to leave the Philippines, because he was under continuous close surveillance. So he returned to Spain. He then wrote “El Filibusterismo” (The Subversive) in 1891,” a sequel to the Noli, which pictured a society on the brink of revolution.
In 1892, amidst the risk on his life, Rizal returned to the Philippines and founded "La Liga Filipina" (The Philippine League) – an organization designed to bring about reforms in the government. Two weeks after his return, he was arrested against charges of rebellion and treason. He was put into exile in Dapitan, in the province of Zamboanga, a peninsula of Mindanao. Here, he built a water supply system, a school, and a hospital.
The four years of his exile coincided with the development of the Philippine Revolution from inception and to its final breakout, which, from the viewpoint of the court which was to try him, suggested his complicity in it. He condemned the uprising, although all the members of the Katipunan had made him their honorary president and had used his name as a cry for war, unity, and liberty.
Near the end of his exile he met and courted the stepdaughter of a patient, an Irishwoman named Josephine Bracken. He was unable to obtain an ecclesiastical marriage because he would not return to Catholicism and was not known to be clearly against revolution. He nonetheless considered Josephine to be his wife and the only person mentioned in the poem, “Farewell, sweet stranger, my friend, my joy...”
Rizal eventually managed to get out of Dapitan to serve as a military doctor for the Spanish troops in Cuba during the Spanish American War. On his way to Barcelona, he was arrested on charges of founding an illegal organization that induced rebellion.
In Manila, he was summoned to military court where evidences of his guilt were mere testimonies from hostile witnesses, his participation to Masonic lodge, his meeting with Pio Del Pilar in Dapitan and his appointment as honorary president of the Katipunan.
Rizal and his counsel smoothly laid out their arguments supporting the latter’s innocence and dismantled the prosecutions’ vindications but substance did not take an effect on the biased members of the court.
After going through the ordeal of a sham trial of fraudulent charges, he was executed in the prime of his life by a squad of the 10th Spanish Infantry Regiment by being shot in the back at 7:00 a.m. on December 30, 1896 at the Campo de Bagumbayan located directly behind the Luneta in Manila. His execution was scheduled for 8:00 a.m. but it was secretly advanced one hour by the Spanish authorities to avoid any demonstration or possibly an uprising by the Filipinos.
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