PHILIPPINES
Plants Legacy As Natural Treatments Text by PJV Images from the stuartxchange.org website, with permission from Dr Godofredo Stuart Jr.
A
fter practising medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, for three decades, Dr. Godofredo U. Stuart Jr. decided to spend his time between his ancestral home in Tiaong Quezon, in the Philippines, and the States. In April 1998, brimming with ideas, he started to build his hilltop house referred to by the locals as the “White House” in Pulang Lupa. In 2003 he returned for good and quickly realised that coming home presented unexpected challenges and that his vision needed to adapt to local realities and expectations. It is sobering to learn how the benefits of the free medical consultations he gave were lost on many of his earlier patients as they could not afford the prescribed medicines and turned to traditional healers called albularyos, hilots, mangluluop or medicos who relied on colourful and cheaper treatments such as concoctions of roots, leaves and flowers, anting-antings, orasyons and bu-longs. (Ilonggo for medidcines) Faced with this challenge, he vigorously pursued his research on alternative medicine and the benefits and dangers of medicinal 24
Culture
