‘Boticas’ of old

Going on a day trip along the lakeshore towns of Laguna is always a treat. Traveling with Albert Barretto, curator of the Nagcarlan Underground Cemetery, is even better because of his local knowledge. We visited Nagcarlan, Liliw, Majayjay, Magdalena, Pagsanjan, Longos, and Paete, clocking in six historic churches, just one fewer than the “Visita Iglesia” required during Holy Week. Aside from heritage, there was a lot of food along the way. We declined the recommendation for a pasta lunch and opted for local fare at the “White House” in Liliw, which served tapang kalabaw, sinantolan, and a killer crispy pata.

Beside the White House was a small street crammed with vendors, hawking Laguna specialties: kropek, espasol, buko pie (not original), papaya atsara, honey, and much more. There was an abundance of pako (an edible fern), green Indian mangoes, bananas, white kamote, ube (purple yam), and kaimito, which came in shades of green or purple (morado). Some kaimitos were round, the size of a baseball; others were oblong. At P65 per kilogram, these were a steal. One vendor was selling live snails (round or spiral) that were still spitting out their juice. There were two basins of black crablets, not the talangka that used to appear in Pampanga in August. These were sold live or deep-fried and so crispy, you could eat everything, including the shell.

While my companions were busy shopping, I observed the crablets in the basins. Magnified for short smartphone videos, the crablets were transformed into critters from a science fiction movie. Then I noticed that groups of them would move onto one side of the basin and swarm at one point, climbing on each other to get out. Like Sisyphus, the crablets seemed doomed to futile punishment: before some crabs got to the top of the basin to escape, they would all slide down. They are a persistent lot, climbing up again and again despite failing repeatedly. I realized two things while watching the crablets in the basin. First, that “crab mentality” does not work the way we believe it to; the crablets didn’t pull each other down, they actually climbed on each other to get out! Second, as a metaphor for Filipino political behavior, this was dreamt up by a political scientist who has never been to a wet market to observe crabs.

In Majayjay, we visited the Farmacia Limquico, the oldest pharmacy in town, whose frontage sold over-the-counter medicines, cold soft drinks, ice cream, and groceries. On the ceiling was stained glass made by the prewar Kraut company that held the pharmacists’ tools: beakers, weighing scales, mortars, and pestles. The saleslady allowed us to go behind the counter to see the old wooden display cabinets. Half the shelves were bursting with infant boxes of infant formula: Bonna, Lactum, Nido, and Bear Brand Junior. The other half reminded me of Emilio Aguinaldo’s medicine cabinet in Kawit, except that these shelves had no eye lotion, but antique glass bottles with assorted powders, liquids, and leaves all labeled in Spanish: Magnesia Doble, Agua Boricada, Raiz Grama, Tint[ura] Guayacol, Tintura Colombo, Alcohol Anis, Ess[ence] Maravillos, etc. If this were a medieval apothecary, I would be on the lookout for jars of “Sanguis draconis” (Dragon’s blood), which was a dark red pigment used for dye or medicine. It is not something out of “Harry Potter’s Dark Arts” class.

This pharmacy reminded me of an anecdote in the Rizal family passed on by the hero’s nephew, Leoncio Lopez Rizal, who recalled the long line of patients who came to consult the so-called “German Doctor” or “Dr. Uliman [Aleman].” Rizal examined the patient, asked a few questions and prescribed “Emulsion de Scott” over and over again. This was the foul-tasting cod liver oil, Scott’s Emulsion, whose trademark, then as now, is a cheerful fisherman carrying a large cod on his back. Today, cod liver oil comes in capsules, and if I remember it right, it was not given to me but to my pet dog for a shiny coat.

My father’s generation was terrified not just of health supplements like Emulsion de Scott but also of purgatives, the most famous being “Aceite de Castor” (castor oil) or Agua de Carabaña, a bitter mineral water popular from the 19th century as a laxative and purgative. My father described its flavor as water from a sewer, “poso negro.” Today, Agua de Carabaña is not ingested but used topically as a cure for acne or to attain smooth, unblemished skin.

In the past, pharmacies also stocked a surefire remedy for hypertension—live leeches were sold from a jar. Allowing these bloodsuckers to drain you of a few pints of blood was believed to bring the blood pressure down.

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My generation, born in the last century, also had to endure bitter pills. If these were too big to be taken in with a gulp of water, the pills were dissolved in a tablespoon of water. To force children to open their mouths, someone held their nose, and when they breathed through their mouths, the bitter liquid poured in. My kind spinster aunts in Pampanga mixed the crushed pills with sugar. Children today have gel capsules, sweet vitamins, and syrups. I grew up with the saying, “If it tastes bad, it is good for you.”

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