The Garden Was Our Drugstore

Chamomile (wikipedia.com)

Las Piñas today is a bustling city with an ever-growing population, majority of whom have no idea about the simple but idyllic life in the area six decades ago, when Las Piñas was famous for saltbeds, jeepney factories, dance halls, a fancy house of ill repute called Hacienda, and the Bamboo Organ. Not necessarily in that order.

The irasan (saltbeds) were laid out parallel to the National Road, with an easement of 15-20 meters on which simple wooden houses were built. There were no walls or fences between neighbors, only hedges and small trees: flowering gumamela (hibiscus), straight-stalked sambong, fast-growing kataka-taka, malunggay, katuray and an occasional kakawate for firewood.

The homes were built in clumps of 10-15, not by design but by dictates of the shapes of fishponds and salt beds around them. Each group of homes had guava trees, tamarind, alagaw, santol, and a mango or avocado. There was a communal feeling about access to the leaves, fruits and roots of all the plants in the community; no one ever said no to neighbors.

ONE DOCTOR, ONE PHARMACY – We all went to one doctor in Barrio Ilaya: Ka Inyong, whose home/clinic was 500 meters from the only pharmacy in Barrio Poblacion, in the shadows of the Bamboo Organ church.

I would use the word apothecary to describe the pharmacy; it was a dimly-lit shop with wood-framed glass cases in front and rows of cabinets and working tables in the backroom. The pharmacist was bald and perhaps approaching 70, and allowed me to hang around his working area whenever I visited.

LANCING THE BOIL – The last time I saw him was one summer when a very large boil developed in my scalp, right above my left ear. He shaved a small part of my head, disinfected it, and started to prepare a cure.

First, he made a circle of several layers of gauze, then proceeded to mix powders and seeds in a marble mortar and pestle. A dark, pungent pomade-like paste held everything together, which he spread on the circle of gauze. The last stage was cutting out a hole smack in the middle of the sticky gauze before it was plastered on my growing boil. I immediately felt a lot of heat from the gauze and sensed that it was working.

I could not bathe for several days while the boil was reaching its peak, egged along by the heat from the herbal concoction. A few days later, the boil was about to burst and it was time to go back to the pharmacist, who lanced the growth and pulled out the “eye” before cleaning and disinfecting the scalp. With a fresh dressing of gauze, I was sent home with the reminder to keep the gauze dry when I bathed. 

BATHING WITH SEEDS – The pharmacist had also worked his magic when I was recovering from measles and could not stand the itchiness all over my dry, cracking skin. He handed me a small paper bag with a handful of dried tiny seeds of kulantro (coriander) that he had gathered from his garden.

I bathed in water in which kulantro seeds had been boiled, and felt immediate relief. The same treatment worked after a bout with bulutong-tubig (chickenpox).

Decades later, I used the kulantro-water rinse to provide relief for my kids’ peeling sunburn.

KATAKATAKA – A succulent that reproduces by growing small plants from its leaves is appropriately called katakataka in Tagalog. The name literally translates into “unbelievable” as thousands of baby plants grown from fallen mature leaves in the garden.

This plant was a must in all backyards, for its unbelievable property to cure ear infections, which everyone suffers from several times in our lives. Children, who play with their ears, are most vulnerable. I was no exception.

The cure was simple and free: heat a mature katakataka leaf over a wooden or charcoal fire until juices start to run out of the stem. Squeeze the warm juice into the infected ear and keep the head tilted for at least 20 minutes to prevent the juice from spilling out of the infected ear.

TAMARIND SPA FOR NEW MOMS – Right after childbirth, moms in our barrio were given what amounts to a steam bath, using steam from a pot of water infused with mature tamarind leaves. In some localities, guava leaves were used instead.

The session is supposed to heal childbirth wounds, relax nerves, improve skin and give an overall sense of wellbeing.

GUAVA DISINFECTANT – Guava is often planted in the Philippines not just for the sweet fruit but for the many medicinal uses of its leaves, stem and bark.

During the summer ritual of neighborhood circumcision, pencil-thin guava stems are given to young boys to bite into while their foreskin gets chopped off. For several days thereafter, the wound is cleaned with water boiled with guava leaves and bark.

On many islands all over the Philippines, water boiled with guava leaves is universally used to clean wounds and fresh cuts.

CHAMOMILE – The yellow flowers of chamomile, or manzanilla, were the mainstays in our medicine cabinet in the form of aceite de manzanilla (oil of chamomile) that mothers massaged into babies’ bellies to cure colic or stomach gas. 

TREE LEAVES FOR TEA – The mature, but not yellowing leaves of mango and avocado were boiled in water to make tea to serve free at roadside stalls selling bibingka and puto bumbong during the Christmas season.