The same Father Blanco also translated into Tagal the French physician Tissot’s work on medicine, enriched with his own life-long observations on Philippine plant-lore.
Along with Blanco’s Flora should be named the catalogue of fauna of the Philippines (Manila, 1895–1896), by the Dominican zoologist, Casto de Elera, an expert in that line of biological science,—a work in folio (in three volumes) of two thousand three hundred pages and upwards, termed by Retana not only a monumental work—easily to be believed—but one unique of its character.
The geology of the islands (Madrid, 1840?), treated by Isidro Sainz de Baranda, government inspector of mines, besides being well worth reading, is the earliest study on this topic made on strictly scientific lines.
Two works, sole representatives of their kind, are named by Retana as of singular value to the physician not only, but to ethnologist and scholar especially,—one the Embriologia Sagrada (Manila, 1856), by the Recoleto missionary Gregorio Sanz, written in aid of his fellow caretakers of souls, whose services in behalf of suffering humanity in out-of-the-way districts were often called upon by the natives, whose practice of the curing art, based on their own traditional formulas, especially in cases of child-bearing, was, despite the efforts of the missionary to uproot their unnatural and utterly heathen disregard for human life, attended too often with destruction of progeny and mother.
The other repository of singular and very curious information is a treatise in Visaya-Cebuano and Spanish by another Recoleto evangelist, Manuel Vilches (Manila, 1877), written similarly in benefit of Indian sick, the Manual, that is, of the Visaya Physician, or native doctor—mediquillo, as in the Philippines these votaries of Hippocrates are styled, a work praised by Retana as replete with Indian plant-lore.
The richest and most valuable collection of statistics relating to the Philippines, so at least acknowledged by experts, more reliable too than the Spanish government’s own work, is the Estado general of all the pueblos—Christianized settlements—in the islands, drawn up by the Dominican archbishop of Manila, Pedro Payo (Manila, 1886), whereof the data were gathered by his vicars-forane and parochial-cures throughout the archipelago. While the most artistic map of Luzon, so styled by Retana, is the chart of that island (Madrid, 1883), published in four sheets by Enrique D’Almonte y Muriel.
With mention of two other authors I close this section of Philippina,—one the history of the islands, or rather a detailed account of his travels therein, by the Augustinian scholar and voyager Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga (Sampaloc, 1803), a work known by its Spanish title as Estadismo de las Filipinas o mis viajes, which, translated into English by John Maver, was published in London in 1814; and lately edited by Retana himself at Madrid in 1893.
As will be easily apparent to even the most cursory reader, Zúñiga’s travels, critical throughout in spirit, display on well nigh every page the results of keen observation of affairs during his wanderings, combined moreover with sober reflections on the character and condition of the various races of people of the chief Philippine islands.
In acknowledgment of its scientific worth, Retana has enriched Zúñiga’s history (in the edition just noted) with twelve scholarly appendices replete with copious erudition, among other topics on the ethnography and geography of the islands; on animals, plants, and minerals. In these appendices, too, will be found copious bibliographies on special topics, as trade, commerce, the não de Acapulco, taxation, finance, and the like.
And,—I feel that attention shall be called thereto, first because the subject itself is deeply interesting to lovers especially of folk-lore, then again, because commonly much misunderstood,—in one of his appendices to Zúñiga (ii *66–*83), Retana has reproduced some twenty-five pages of a Pangasinán Charm Book, covered with strange words—jumbles, most of them, of mutilated Church Latin, with crosses and queer-looking symbols. This charm-book in MS. (as are all its fellows), whereof copies without count are circulated among the lowest, most superstitious classes of islanders—Indians and meztizos, that is, Spaniard, or Chinese, mixed with native,—is wont to be worn around the neck, in the disguise of a Catholic scapular, as safeguard to the wearer against perils of any kind, chiefly the knife, or bullet, of his enemy. Again,—I am quoting Retana, who gives his own personal experiences in Luzon,—so jealously and closely (he says) do these Indian charm-bearers guard their secret heathenish practice from their missionaries, who, for ages, albeit not always with good result, have been striving to detach their wards from such superstitious usages, that the same scholar and curio-hunter, despite his keenest research in Luzon, has never been able to catch even a glimpse but of three of these pagan scapularies, the ones shown to him by a Dominican missionary, Father Casimiro Lafuente, for many years cure at the pueblo of Santa Barbara, in Pangasinán, now (1893) a member of the house of his brotherhood at Avila, in Spain. Moreover, it appears, from the same Retana, that Father Lafuente, so many years resident in the islands, had never succeeded in unearthing other scapularies than these self-same three.