 Today I'll give a talk on General Antonio Luna, who is, we know as a very brave and brilliant general of the Philippine Revolution, but we don't know much about his earlier career as a scientist. And so, this year in 2016, we marked the 150th year anniversary of the general's birthday. And this is the right year to mark all his achievements. We know his achievements as a general, but not much as a scientist. Now, he was a scientist before he became a general and he worked on malaria as a disease. And he's one of the first Asian researchers who would tackle the problem of malaria. And he was part of an emerging research program that was International in Scope, which proved that the Filipino is able to do brilliant science and it contribute to world knowledge. But this really is part of a big process of development in which started during our colonial history, during the Spanish period. Because at that time, the Spanish government decided to improve the conditions of her colonies, the Philippines being one of them. Modern science was essentially promoted by a Spanish government agency called the Sociedad Económicas del Amigos del País, which wanted to introduce new techniques in agriculture, in medicine, and in industry. Now, all of these developments may ensure that our people, especially those who were educated like Antonio Luna and even Jose Rizal and all of our heroes, they were able to study in the universities, first at the University of Santo Tomas, then universities in Spain and in Europe. Now, and this is within the context of our developing nationhood, which first wanted reforms from the Spanish government that Filipinos be given equality, the right to be represented in the Spanish legislature. And when this was not possible, we developed our own national identity that demanded independence from the colonial power. So, this is where we put General Antonio Luna's life in the proper context in our history of reform and revolution. And so, General Luna, as we can see here, has two careers. First, as a scientist, you can see him looking at his microscope. This is a standard formal photograph of scientists in the 19th century. And on the other hand, we see his, him wearing the General's uniform as the commander of the Filipino army at that time. But before we go more deeply into Antonio Luna's career, let's just have a brief background of where he came from. He was born on the 29th of October, 1866, in Binondo, Manila, and got a Bachelor of Arts from the Atineo de Manila and continued on to take a degree in pharmacy from the University of Santo Tomas, but he never finished his degree because he went to Spain. And while he was at UST, he published an undergraduate essay which won an award at the Squarepus Fundamentalis de Chimica, which was about Dalton's atomic theory. And even then, Antonio Luna was interested in science and was doing quite well brilliantly in that subject. While at the UST, he was also studying military science and tactics, something that would prepare him for command when he joined the revolution. And so here we see the birthplace of General Luna in Manila. It's still there. Unfortunately, it's now owned by a private entity and it's used as a storage place for commodities. And we hope that the city of Manila will be able to buy the building so it will be preserved for all time. And so Antonio Luna went on to take a license sheet in pharmacy from the University of Barcelona. A license sheet now is equivalent to a master's. Then he took his Doctor of Pharmacy from the Universidad Central de Madrid, which is now known as the Complotense. That's the National University of Spain. Then he did his doctoral research as the Institut Pasteur in Paris under the laboratory of Dr. Rue. But he was supervised by Dr. Eli Mechnikov. Later on, we'll find out more about Mechnikov and how he is important into our understanding of immunology today. While at the Institut Pasteur, Antonio Luna published his doctoral thesis, Na El Hematuzovario de Paludismo. And in all of these, he was really awarded a scholarship grant. He's the first Filipino to be sent to a scholar in science in our history. So many other Filipinos have followed him. Countess other Filipinos have taken their doctoral studies in science and did scientific research. And the first among these is General Antonio Luna. So because he had the scholarship, he was obliged to go back to the Philippines. And when he got back, he was awarded a research grant to study water quality in the city of Manila. And he got a job as the municipal chemist of Manila. But to put this research in proper context, in the last three decades of the 19th century, we saw a lot of advances in science, in industry, but still, communicable diseases were a major threat to human life and well-being. In the last three decades of the 19th century, the British Empire was the one ruling much of the world. They say that the sun never sat on the British Empire. The French were becoming colonialists too. They had their own colonies. Italy becomes a newly unified state. After defeating the Papal States, it became a single nation. Spain was on the decline, and so she decided to improve conditions in her remaining colonies. And the United States, having defeated the Southern Rebellion, became a unified state under reconstruction and started to consider itself as a world-end colonial power. This was the situation at the last three decades of the 19th century. And so these advances in medical research happened in this context. The colonialism was reaching its peak, so there was a need to ensure that the colonies ruled by Spain, by Britain and the French should be, at least their people should be healthy. And so during this time, okay, there were advances in research, like Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease. Koch developed his postulates to find out how disease is transmitted. Pasteur tested his rabies vaccine, and for the first time malaria, then called paludissim, was hypothesized to be caused by a pathogen rather than malaria or bad air. Malaria was colonialism's biggest public health problem then. And the ancient understanding was that it was due to bad air, other also known as miasmas. But with Pasteur and Koch starting to think otherwise, knowing that the causative factors for disease were due to pathogens, the question now was whether it was a bacteria or some sort of protozoa. Now in order to test this, it has to be subjected to experimentation using Koch's four postulates. So the first conclusion was malaria was caused by a bacterium called Basilus malariae. So let's move on to 2016 for a while. Malaria is still a problem today, especially with climate change. As you can see, the countries in red are most affected, the ones in yellow in a lesser way. And including the Philippines, which is in the yellow color, it is also threatened by malaria as the world becomes warmer. So it's still a problem today. And the research for against malaria to deal with malaria started more than 150 years ago. And so we see here that malaria's vectors, the mosquitoes are spreading all over the world, places that were not threatened like Russia is now having cases of malaria of their own, which was not reported a year 50 years ago. So with climate change, malaria is becoming a global and even worse global threat. But there's good news. The death rate has dropped by almost 60% since the beginning of the millennium. And incidence has dropped by 37%. And the Philippines will see a 75% dropping incidence. Now this is due to the research done by scientists in the last 150 years. And one of those scientists was General Antonio Luna. But the bad news is for every good news, there are some bad news. 500,000 people approximately are killed every year directly by malaria. And many of these people are small children. In fact, 350,000 children die of malaria every year. And climate change will make things worse if we don't do anything to fix our climate. And so with this background at the present, let's revisit malaria research in the 19th century. The first scientist who studied this wanted to find out what the causative agent was. Was it a bacteria or a protozoa? And is there a vector? They suspected that there was but they didn't know exactly what it is. Now if they established that there's a vector or something that transmits to disease, why does the causative agent change morphology in vivo? Now this is a medical question because even then the scientists were already finding out that there were changes in the parasite once it enters the bloodstream with developments in microscopy. The first techniques is to look at blood under the microscope. And so Pasteur wanted to prove whether germs caused disease. So what he did was to heat flask and seal it. And there was no bacteria. Heat a flask to sterilize it but open the flask and there will be bacteria because it was contaminated. We heat the flask, tilt it but not seal it but still there will be bacteria. So the bacteria comes from somewhere rather than from nothing. Before disease was understood to come from nothing. In Latin they call it ex nihilo. But with modern medical science and this is the foundation of modern medical science diseases are caused by a pathogen that infects a living organism which was proven by Robert Koch. In which his postulate was first is that if there is an organism with the disease you can find the bacteria if you look it up under the microscope then you can culture the bacteria on the second step then inject the culture into a live animal and see if the live animal develops the disease then look at the blood sample under the microscope and see if the pathogen is there and culture the pathogen thereby proving that bacteria or any kind of pathogen is causing disease. Now this was the framework for understanding infection when Antonio Luna was doing his doctoral research. And so the Italians launched the first national program in research on malaria because there were 2 million cases every year and about 20,000 to 15,000 deaths in malaria in Italy and that had dire effects on the economy of Italy. Also malaria was killing a lot of people the European colonialists in Asia and Africa. And so here we find the context of research. Now what about the Philippines which was then a Spanish colony? It was also a major problem in the Philippines and that's the reason while the Spanish government gave a license to the University of Santo Tomas to open a medical school in 1871. If you would recall, Rizal entered the medical school a few years after it was established. So when Rizal studied to become a doctor the medical school was newly established. The first seven doctors graduated in 1877 were all sent to the provinces to combat malaria. And so by 1896 the UST faculty of medicine and surgery successfully produced enough doctors that each province in the country had its own medical doctor which collected statistics on diseases and some of these statistics are on malaria. Science was taught in the 19th century University of Santo Tomas. Despite what Rizal wrote in El Fili Bustirismo in which Rizal portrayed science in UST as rather backward, the truth is much more than that. Science in UST was quite advanced for its time. And that's why we have eminent doctors that were educated in UST like Antonio Luna, Anacleto del Rosario and Francisco Tongyo Longliungson. There are many other doctors educated but let's focus on these three because their research interests were all interrelated. In Italy, several doctors like Camilo Golgi and Giovanni Grassi and Dr. Bigdani may be familiar to listeners because they are now in, their names are in some biology textbooks. They are the ones who pioneered the systematic study of malaria in which they hypothesized that the mosquito anoprolis was the vector and they looked at how the malaria parasite was transmitted and also how the parasites changed once it's inside the human body. And the Italians found that the mosquito was responsible. Unfortunately, they were not able to directly demonstrate it. Perhaps it's due to the lack of research equipment but they were able to come close to coming to the conclusion about the role of the mosquito. Now, of course, the Italians were quite, the French were quite interested in how the parasites change in their morphology once they infect a human being. So, these are what we now know as merizowites and it was the French scientist Dr. Laverang who won the Nobel Prize later that demonstrated that the parasite does live in human blood. And Sir Patrick Manson who's considered to be the father of tropical medicine demonstrated experimentally that the merizowites change, they develop into different forms once they are in human blood. And these merizowites are alive. They're not dead. According to Dr. Marchafrava won another award and he was the first to name the parasite as Plasmojum which medical scientists and doctors still call the malaria parasite. And the honor of experimentally demonstrating that mosquitoes are the vector of malaria fell on Dr. Ronald Ross a Scottish scientist who won the Nobel Prize in 1902 because he was able to demonstrate that the parasite itself was in the body of the mosquito and when that is, when the mosquito bites a human being then the parasite is transmitted. Now, all of these scientists that I mentioned were all mentioned or cited by Antonio Luna because he worked in laboratories which were at the at the forefront of research on malaria. So he worked under the lab of Dr. Pierre Rue who was really interested in bacteriology of dipteria but he was directly supervised by Dr. Eli Machnikov which was working on cellular immunology. So, this is where Antonio Luna's research comes in. The question is any research needs a scientific question. Now, what we know because his career was quite short as a scientist. He only worked as a scientist for about three years and then the revolution broke and he had to come home. One of the questions that we may ask in the context of present medical science is that what kind of fury of infection was he trying to propose? Was he creating an immunological one or a germ fury one? This was a question that was first proposed by one of our medical historians. And in order to answer this I think we need to look at his research, his doctoral thesis which fortunately is now available online. The thesis El Hematuzario de Paludismo So, Extugius Experimental just tells us the blood parasites of malaria and its experimental studies about it that's the English translation of the thesis title tells us how Antonio Luna was able to to find out, to confirm earlier discoveries and find out the future direction of possible treatments for malaria. Now, malaria then as now is treated by anti-malarial drugs. Now today we have artificially synthesized quinine-like substances but during that time it was only from the bark of the chinchona tree which is the source of quinine can actually kill off malaria parasites in the body. Now, one of the important important things that Antonio Luna wanted to find out at what stage of the changes in the malaria parasite will a certain drug kill it more effectively. So, that's one of his questions. Now, here perhaps we can locate Antonio Luna's research in this international effort to combat the disease. Now, as I told earlier, he got the scholarship from the Spanish Government and one of his main responsibilities if he got the scholarship is to improve the public health system in the Philippines along what the Italians did. And whatever skills Luna learns in Europe can be taught to Filipino doctors especially at the UST. So, those were some of the objectives of his scholarship grant and his doctoral thesis has four objectives. One is to demonstrate the findings of Dr. Laveran and Dr. Grassi's which was demonstrated about 15 years before. He also wanted to do an experimental test for the parasite of malaria plus modium and how it changes when it infects a human being especially in the blood to culture the malaria parasite outside a living body. That's what we call in vitro culturing and this would enable him to test cox for postulates as we mentioned earlier and to develop histological diagnostics for the malaria parasite. So, these are the four important objectives of Luna's doctoral research. You may have noted by now it's within the framework of what Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch proposed for infection. These are the paradigms then that were scientists were working under with. So, here we can see the complex cycle of malaria. Antonio Luna was just interested in the cycle in REM which is where when the parasite infects the human being so everything, all those changes happening in blood. In fact if a person is infected then there should be a way to stop the parasite in the blood stream but the other way preventing malaria is just to prevent the infect the mosquito from infecting the person. So, those are the two strategies. Of course the first strategy is more effective control the mosquito we stop malaria but once if what will happen if a person is infected. Okay, that's the important research focus of Antonio Luna is to find possible cures once the person is infected. And so, since he followed Leveran and Dr. Manson he wanted to test how the parasites change. So, and that could be done by using the right histological stains and to look at the flagella in which to find out if the if the malaria parasite has its sexual stages in the human being. Now, this drawing here shows us the only surviving scientific illustration of General Antonio Luna Unfortunately, his laboratory notebooks burned down in an art gallery fire around in 1985 if I'm not mistaken. So, we lost his original laboratory notebooks. And so, we're just left with his doctoral dissertation. It would be better for historians of science if we could look at originally at his laboratory notebooks. Unfortunately it's no longer with us. That's the major major problem in this kind of research. Nevertheless, based on the doctoral dissertation and his citations of earlier research we know that General Luna confirmed the results of earlier scientists like Dr. Leveran and Dr. Grassi. He was verified for the postulates of Robert Koch. He was able to demonstrate clinical differentiation of malaria merizovites in blood. He was able to try an in vitro culture technique but failed because the technology wasn't there yet. And he developed diagnostic histological staining techniques which are still used today to diagnose malaria. That's the fifth one is most relevant for us today because there needs to have a rapid diagnostic technique for malaria especially in places that are far from a hospital or far from a medical laboratory. So, just like any scientist, not all of the research objectives would have have succeeded. So, what General Luna failed to do was to test the in vivo technique because there was no way to culture the parasite the technology wasn't there yet the techniques weren't there yet. But Luna knew that the in vitro technique is needed in an effective immunological approach to diagnosis. He knew that quite clear. But that technique would only come in in 1976 and remember Luna was working on this in 1893 So, it was a few decades into the future before the technique would have been perfected. Let me just introduce to you another medical scientist another scholar who followed Luna and who worked with him in the laboratory in the Pasteur Institute Doctor Francisco Tom Jolong Sean which is even less known than Antonio Luna because he never was a general He finished pharmacy He got his license shaped from Madrid He got his doctor of medicine degree in Madrid and published a thesis on immunology, lasellula antimicrobial and when he came back to fight for the revolution he was made a colonel because he was the head of the medical core of the Philippine Revolutionary Army and when the Americans took over the Philippines he ran for the Senate of the Philippines in 1916 and died in 1919 Now what does Doctor Jolong Sean have to do with Antonio Luna In a way, he continued some of the research of Antonio Luna which was to look at the possible immunological immunological approaches to treating diseases especially malaria This also proves that there was a concerted effort to develop science in the last part of the Spanish colonial period So Luna was one of the first scientists, then Jolong Sean followed and if if the program continued probably other scientists would have been sent to Europe to study medicine or the health sciences or any science So when they came back they could develop a colony but the Philippines would never remain a colony, the people did not want to remain a colony and so we became an independent country but even then we still had our problems in public health then as now Now going back to the public health problem there's a lot of resources that are needed to diagnose patients and the more effective and less expensive and more rapid the diagnostic technique and doctors can agree with us the better it is for our public health system Now one of the important contributions of Antonio Luna when he got this doctoral degree is to come up with with a diagnosis for malaria which is called the blood film technique Of course Antonio Luna's research results were eventually improved by other doctors but then what he established in his research is still being used today So if you go to a place where you suspect that you can catch malaria and there are many places in the world in which this could happen even here in the Philippines Then if you get, if you feel sick then you see a doctor and you tell the doctor I've been to a place where there might be malaria what the doctor will order is for a blood film test and once the doctor sees that there are malaria parasites in your blood then the doctor can order the treatment protocol for you and save your life Now this blood film technique which was partly developed by General Luna has probably saved millions of lives around the world and most of the lives that were saved are of small children Perhaps this is one of his greatest contributions as a medical scientist But we know that his scientific career was short So what happened is he was implicated in the revolution by Andres Bonifacio But he was not convinced about the revolution So one part of his he denied he participated in it and his deposition with the Spanish authorities may have implicated José Rizal in the revolution So leading to the execution of José Rizal But later on Antonio Luna based on historical documents that were recently found in the UST archives expressed regret for his non-support of the revolution So after being imprisoned first in Spain then in the Philippines because he was sent to Spain as an exile and he was imprisoned then he was released then he was imprisoned again By then the Philippine Republic had already been proclaimed by General Aginaldo So what he did was to offer his services to the revolution By then the Spaniards were no longer in power and the Philippine Republic was facing a greater threat to its existence the United States So this is where we find Antonio Luna's career Most of us know his career as a general Most of us know that he was quite hot-headed and was very abrasive to his contemporaries Now this is really part of his character He wanted discipline in his army but the Filipinos were not accustomed to discipline so he had problems and with the factionalization in the government of Aginaldo with members of his cabinet wanting to be under to get some autonomy under the United States Antonio Luna eventually was for the pro-independence faction and was treacherously assassinated in June 6, 1899 Now if you put this career in context here is a still from the movie General Luna this is what people remember him as the brave general charging against his enemies but there's more to what he what we think he is He is his career as a scientist which we don't know really has something in relation to his career as a military general because his approach to command was rather methodological reflecting his training as a scientist and his demand for exactness in discipline that his orders should be followed to the exact letter are traits that he developed as a scientist which landed well in his military command but this early death at the age of around 32 leads us with an important question what if he had lived long enough what could have he contributed to science and the development of the Filipino nation we know that during the short lived Filipino republic he was appointed the first dean of any science college in the Philippines and this was the faculty of pharmacy of the Universidad Literaria de Filipinas which is the direct precursor of the university of the Philippines so the University of the Philippines has a direct link to Luna's academic career although the Universidad Literaria was dissolved when the first republic was about to collapse its trustees some of them became the first regents of the University of the Philippines revived the idea of a national university which was really part of Luna's idea for a free and independent nation so that is where I end my talk on General Luna because a nation will not have any identity as a separate as a separate people a proud people if it does not have a scientific tradition and that was part of Antonio Luna's vision that we are a free nation with a scientific culture and we are developed and able to stand proud with other countries around the world and we still have to realize that dream as a developed country and so I hope you learn something about the earlier life of General Luna if you want to find out more there are a lot of resources online and also the doctoral thesis or dissertation of General Antonio Luna can be downloaded in the internet from the National Library of Spain's website and you can easily find out other resources about his career also from various websites so with that I hope you learned something and thank you and good day