Rothdauscher’s Vaguio and other Cebu stories part 2 of 3

BERSALES

In last week’s column, I introduced Dr. Heinrich Rothdauscher, a young 28-year-old German pharmacist who came to Cebu City to head the local branch of Botica Santa Cruz between 1879 and 1883. His great-grandson Gerhard Prokop has put up a website about him, whose 10 years in the Philippines, between 1873 and 1883, are the main gist of a memoir he wrote in German in 1932, some five years before his passing.

Gerhard has also so kindly allowed anyone who asks for the 218-page memoir in pdf format. He also sent me some drawings made by Heinrich sometime in 1882, of views of Cebu from the second-floor window of his house-cum-pharmacy, which was just to the southeast of the Cebu Cathedral, where Belmont Hardware is located now. Gerhard has moreover also kindly sent a photograph taken during this period, from up the belfry of the Cathedral, looking down towards the pharmacy, and beyond. Today, let me give you some more snippets of Heinrich’s life in Cebu.

First off, someone up in heaven was looking down on our young German pharmacist because the steamboat he was supposed to board, the “S.S. Mactan,” leaving Manila for Cebu on January 14, 1879, was somehow rescheduled to a day later. So that Heinrich Rothdauscher had to look for another steamer. He eventually found the “S.S. Cebu” and boarded it on January 14, 1879. The “S.S. Mactan,” on the other hand, did leave on the 15th, but it ran aground in some reef and sank with almost everyone on board. Of this great luck, Rothdauscher writes in his memoiren, “My good star had saved me from the wet grave!” (translation mine).

And so, on January 16, 1879, Heinrich arrived in Cebu to begin the life of the only pharmacist south of Manila, together with a dog and a servant boy from Vigan. He describes the small port city this way: “Cebu has a lot of traffic on the port; Spanish steamships have connections with Manila.

German, English and other sailing ships take sugar and hemp. Warships sometimes visit the island and small sailboats for the coastal travel to the neighboring islands are anchored here in a considerable number.”

Comparing Cebu with Vigan, he adds: “Other people, other language, other circumstances, different climate. Vigan is cool, cozy, quiet, retired in its romantic location, almost without connections to the rest of the world. Cebu, on the other hand, is a commercial center located directly on the sea, where European merchants are engaged in fast-paced trade. The climate is warmer than in Vigan. Here the dollar is rolling, Vigan is content with just cents. Vigan does not drag away riches, but the farewell is wistful. Cebu will gladly bid you off when you its done with your business.”

Of the Botica Santa Cruz, Rothdauscher states, “The pharmacy in Cebu has a favorable location on the main street leading from the port to the large square nearby, which on one side shows the large parish church surrounded by trees, and the episcopal ‘palace’ on the other. Between the pharmacy and the Cathedral stretched Calle de Legaspi. The house had therefore two street fronts, while the two other sides were surrounded by a large garden, in which some Papayas and Atis bore delicious fruits, while a large Ylangylang tree gave a most pleasant smell. The owner of the house was an Cebuano native named Cabrera. The annual rent for everything was two hundred seventy-six dollars; that is, the monthly cost of twenty-three dollars.

On the front, the pharmacy carried the inscription ‘Botica, Manga Tambal, Varios Articulos.’ ‘Manga Tambal’ is medicines in Visaya, the language of the natives. The Tagal word for medicine is ‘Gamot’ and in the Ilocano, it is called ‘Agas.’”

Like every foreigner, then as now, who is introduced for the first time to a place and, invariably, to its language, Rothdauscher offers Visayan (Cebuano) equivalents of cuss words in Tagalog, which I shall not go into detail. It is but sufficient that there is apparently this human penchant anywhere since time immemorial in this planet to teach a foreigner these words first or at the first week he or she is around.

Reading his memoirs further, we learn one superstitious belief that has been lost in the present among Cebuanos that someone like a pharmacist would be able to recall since this involves medicines if not followed: “It is customary that not only all the doors of the house but also boxes, crates, cabinets and drawers are opened when someone is about to give birth, so that the pregnant woman can give birth more easily.”

Gerhard, Rothdauscher’s great-grandson, warned me that there are many things Rothdauscher writes about which would not find print in modern Germany as much as in the Philippines, given political correctness, but let me provide one in order to give us an inkling at the funny-bones that this young pharmacist had: “Although the Indios are insensitive to many smells from which our noses suffer terribly, their nose seems to be particularly sensitive to certain fragrances. So an Indio demanded from me a perfume with the quaint name ‘Agua de sudor de doncella.’ Young woman’s sweat!”
Let me end with one successful business venture this adventurous German pharmacist made in Cebu, out of our religious processions that remind you of some peoples’ less-pious motives in joining one today: “The popular pastime of the Visayans were the pompous ecclesiastical processions that followed each other in Cebu in even greater numbers than in Manila and Vigan. It was pleasant for me in two respects. They were interesting in their way and then I saw them as a ‘brilliant’ way of doing business in Bengali fireworks, which was burnt down on these occasions, making the processions particularly glamorous. Many mestizos bought one or two dozen Bengali lights, which made them shine in the procession. I made these ‘lights’ in the shape and size of a thin candle between half a dollar to a dollar in thickness. To some of these splendid spectacles I needed fifty to a hundred pieces. The bearer walked proudly along the route, chewing and blasting betel nut, his servant at the side, carrying the supply and giving his master a fresh candle when one was extinguished.”