Madhouse and lunatics

When I first visited the Philippine National Archives in the 1980s, I was given a folder with a list of archival documents classified by topics and arranged in bundles. Some materials had been photocopied and bound, so you could pick these off a shelf; these volumes were marked, in Spanish, “Sediciones y rebeliones” and “Erreccion de Pueblos.” A drawer had big typewritten cards describing the “Cedulario de Manila,” the earliest documents in the archives. If you chose from the list in the folder, a bundle or bundles would be found for you on the upper floors of the National Library building and brought to your table. Documents were wrapped in thick Manila paper and tied with straw. On the wrapper you would sometimes see, aside from the rubber stamp of the archives, small handwritten initials, signatures and dates—reminders to some absent-minded researchers like myself that we had worked on the bundle before.

Digitization of the collection has been ongoing for decades since I last visited, so I presume research is easier, faster and more comfortable these days. While there is a certain romance to handling original, centuries-old documents, or trying to make sense of 17th-century handwriting and abbreviations, I prefer working on scanned documents simply because you can enlarge, enhance and manipulate them. Working with originals is an issue for me because one of the ironies of my life is that I am allergic to book and document dust.

One of the first document groups I visited was marked “Dementes,” and in it I had hoped to find the prototype of Jose Rizal’s enduring creation “Sisa,” or a 19th-century equivalent of National Artist BenCab’s muse “Sabel.” I was not disappointed because there was not one but many Sisas and Sabels documented by the Guardia Civil at the time. In 1893 a certain “Memen” roamed the streets of Binondo, frequently causing scandal in the church. In 1895 Brigida Villaruel, an orphan left in the care of an old and poor relative, was caught roaming Quiapo. She was later committed to the Hospicio de San Jose. In 1892 a vagabond was arrested in Manila who could not provide a name or address when questioned. Since the Guardia Civil could not tell whether she was deaf, dumb, or demented, she was turned over to the Hospicio de San Jose.

These documents made me wonder whether some normal but homeless people were committed to an asylum by the Guardia Civil simply to get them off the streets. According to the Guardia Civil, the arrested women exhibited symptoms of madness, but since they were neither doctors nor psychiatrists, how could they tell? I did not look into the bundles for prisons to check on the numbers, but I suspect it was temptingly easy for the police to commit vagrants to San Jose. Perhaps there was a separate bundle for it, but not a single document in the Dementes bundle showed someone committed to the Hospicio de San Jose by a relative or friend; this responsibility was left to the government and the Guardia Civil. If relatives cared for and kept their demented kin at home, then those in San Jose were, literally, rejects of society.

In April 1895 the capitan municipal, parish priest, and prominent citizens of Dupax, Nueva Vizcaya, wrote the governor to complain about one Nicolas Umli Libanan, who, for two years, had been observed to be suffering from mental illness. At certain times of the year he was so disturbed that he was unable to do any kind of work except the most rudimentary. He was always kept on a short leash, restrained by an iron chain and collar. When beset by his illness he spoke incoherently, or he would pray and from time to time burst into boisterous laughter or loud guffaws. Frequently he had a fainting spell followed by a normal state, when he spoke well and became quiet and very timid. After examination by a government doctor, he was declared mentally ill and was diagnosed with monomania religiosa, meaning he would mimic the actions of a priest.

In a similar case, preventive detention was ordered by a judge in Bayombong against one Macaria Cariño, who, aside from unspecified but frequent scandalous behavior, was a pyromaniac! To protect the community from the permanent danger she posed, she was committed to a madhouse. The fact that she was examined in Bilibid prior to her entry into the Hospicio de San Jose suggests that she was indeed considered harmful.

In 1891 Agustin Gabayani of Tigbauan, Iloilo, was branded a real menace to the community because he loved to burn down houses. Expert medical opinion on his case deemed him incurable. Even his relatives had given up on him, and since Iloilo had no mental hospital the governor requested that he be taken to Manila and admitted to San Jose.

Not everything in the Dementes bundle was engaging; for the examples given above, most of the documents were impersonal medical records from the Hospicio de San Jose on the admission of mental patients. From these documents one could sense that patients were received and processed very much like delivered furniture.

These documents help us understand why the Hospicio de San Jose was built in 1810 on the Isla de San Andres on the Pasig—an island renamed the “Isla de Convalecencia.” Some patients from San Juan de Dios hospital were quarantined here with the mentally ill swept away from the rest of society.

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