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Social History of Medicine Advance Access originally published online on February 1, 2009
Social History of Medicine 2009 22(1):45-60; doi:10.1093/shm/hkn095
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. All rights reserved.

Sex, Masturbation and Foetal Death: Filipino Physicians and Medical Mythology in the Late Nineteenth Century

Raquel A. G. Reyes*

* Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1 OXG, UK. E-mail: rr14{at}soas.ac.uk and Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), Leiden, The Netherlands.


  Abstract

As a case study of the Filipino elite's engagement with western medicine, this article looks at the writings of two brothers who studied in Paris in the 1880s, Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera (1857–1925) and Félix Pardo de Tavera (1859–1932). It focuses first on Trinidad's observations on folk beliefs and popular medicine in the Philippines, and secondly on Félix's doctoral dissertation, in which he examined the causes of foetal death during early pregnancy. Both the Pardo de Tavera brothers found the methods of modern scientific medicine to be greatly superior in diagnosing and treating disease than the diverse practices followed in the Philippines. But in embracing western medicine, I shall argue, they and other young Filipino physicians of their generation simultaneously embraced western moral prejudices and proscriptions that had no basis in science.

Keywords: Philippines; folk beliefs; popular medicine; Catholicism; scientific medicine; Paris; Hôpital Lariboisière; metrorrhagia; masturbation; foetal death


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