QUEZON CITY -- Having much free time during his exile in Dapitan from 1892 to 1896, Dr. Jose P. Rizal became quite detached from his revolutionary persona and took on a more scholarly pursuit. He focused and studied his environment that led him to create innovative solutions and conducted research in the areas of public health, livelihood, and public works, among others, that proved helpful to many people in Dapitan.

In this four-year interregnum, according to Department of Science and Technology (DOST) Secretary Fortunato “Boy” T. de la Peña, the national hero was considered a scientist and innovator in the webinar organized by the DOST-Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD) on 2 February 2022. The discussions focused on the quiet years of Rizal’s exile when he immersed himself with the community and discovered scientific solutions that benefitted the people. De la Peña, who was instrumental in the creation of the largest Rizal 3D-printed monument in the country installed at the DOST grounds last 30 December 2021, shared that the Great Malayan contributed in the upskilling of the fisherfolks in Dapitan as he introduced an improved fishing net called pukutan. Rizal, with a natural inclination for agriculture, learned of this innovation from Calamba fisherfolks that helped increase fish yields.

To further help the small farmers, Rizal even imported farm machineries and implements from the United States.

Rizal developed a gravity water system delivered through pipelines, which afforded the community with safe and clean drinking water. Currently, the pipes used are still in existence.

His continued subscription to various scientific magazines such as the Scientific American kept him updated with progress in the global scientific community. Finding much value in the information he got, he also invented the first brick making machine that he estimated can produce 6,000 bricks a day.

“His inventions,” added de la Peña, “were borne out of his bare hands and imagination and the passion to serve the people.”

Even in his leisure time, Rizal was able to invent a fortune telling board game that he called La Sibylla Cumana, a board game where there were 52 questions to choose from while a wooden top was spun to reveal the number by which the corresponding combination of numbers would intersect to indicate the page where the answer could be found.

According to de la Peña, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) believes that the board game holds some mysteries such as a possible secret message derived from the selection and arrangement of numbers on the game, that until has not been decoded.

Innovations ahead of his time

In his presentation, Eufemio Agbayani of the NHCP believes that in the case of Rizal’s innovations, these were some of the things that he encountered and experienced during his many travels in Europe and in other places, which he brought to the community like Dapitan where they were non-existent at that time.

Agbayani explained that “in Rizal’s case, many of these innovations that Rizal had introduced were the things that he encountered and experienced while he was in Europe and other countries, and used it to benefit the lives of the people in Dapitan.”

Agbayani added that Rizal’s time in Dapitan gave him so much time that enabled him to think of new things that could help the community.

He also mentioned that Rizal was involved in developing the Linaw water works. The system allowed water to flow from the hills down to the towns of Talisay and Poblacion through gravitational force.

He shared that some parts of the waterways are still intact to this day although it is no longer being used.

Rizal also introduced the street lamps using coconut oil, an innovation that Agbayani believes during that time, greatly helped Dapitan that had no streetlights then.

He further stressed that Rizal helped the community as perito agrimensor or land surveyor, marking Dapitan’s modern-day streets.

Aside from this, Rizal learned from a literature that the fruit of Bakawan or Mangrove can also be used as a sealant.

In his letter to Fr. Francisco de Paula Sanchez on 30 December 1892, Rizal described his experiment on the said fruit, where Agbayani pointed out, resulted in the improvement of the recipe used by Rizal from what he had read from a literature so that the concoction would not harden easily.

Agbayani added that the sealant was used to cover poke marks on wood.

Insatiable appetite for learning

Rizal, not to sit in a quiet corner and let the time pass him by, endeavored in other useful pursuits that he knew would help the people in their daily lives. Other significant innovations mentioned during the webinar included Rizal’s dedication to the farmers when he formed an abaca planter and harvester’s association, to which he personally wrote the by-laws. Rizal wanted the planters to be able to improve their products, market abaca, and establish a cooperative store with moderate pricing of the abaca products.

He was also instrumental in innovating public health, being a medical doctor, when he encouraged the community to pump out swamp water and sanitize it to prevent the spread of mosquito-borne diseases and other disease-carrying parasites in the community.

He was, in fact, a one-man permanent medical mission that took him to far-flung communities to attend to the sick who had no means or access to medical care at that time.

Further on, his research on fresh water snails, led him to discover a parasite that caused Schistosomiasis disease. The disease, according to Rizal, could infect the urinary tract or the intestines and would cause symptoms that included abdominal pain, diarrhea, bloody stool, or blood in the urine. It is believed that those who with infection for a long time may experience liver damage, kidney failure, infertility, or bladder cancer. It may also cause poor growth and learning difficulty for children.

Agbayani also unraveled Rizal’s La Curacion de las Hechizados that was considered as an early ethnographic research on kulam or magical spell. Agbayani underscored that Rizal tried to understand the concept of the supernatural where he combined his studies on ethnology, Filipino culture, and psychology. Although the study did not focus on the cure but it was understood as a work of Filipino psychology.

In the article, Curious Rizal Was Fascinated by the Paranormal by Bryan Anthony C. Paraiso and posted on the NHCP website, it talked about Rizal’s monograph on bewitchment. He explained that “in the Philippines, the bewitched are those who suffer from a disease unique or unknown to quacks and whose cause cannot be attributed to the air, heat, cold, vapor from the earth, nor even to indigestion, the only pathogenic causes accepted in the country.” Thus, Rizal “firmly asserted the manggagaway’s bewitchment is an idea or evocation of suffering implanted in the victim’s mind.

Rizal to modern Filipinos

Agbayani concluded his presentation saying that Rizal’s innovations were applications of what had been done elsewhere, [but] they served an important purpose to improve the lives of his fellow Filipinos. He underscored Rizal’s cooperation with the wider academic community and his immersion in the community which allowed for more beneficial innovations that have survived him and continues to help modern Filipinos to this day.

Moreover, the DOST found parallelism to what Rizal did more than a century ago, to what the department has always pursued., that is innovation. The DOST has its current community-based innovations such as the Ceramic Water Filtration system, a low-cost table-top water filtration system developed using nano-particles and are suitable during natural disasters and off-the-grid living. Another one is the Rainwater Collection system, a contraption of easy-to-assemble rainwater collection system made from durable materials that can easily fit into downspouts to collect and store water for household use.

Also presented was the Program Boondock, a Baguio-based engineering center, which developed cable carts that transport upland vegetables down to the trading post in the far-flung communities of Northern Luzon.

In her message, DOST Undersecretary for Research and Development Dr. Rowena Cristina L. Guevara said that it is her hope that through the forum, “we will be reminded that Dr. Jose P. Rizal was a scientist and an engineer who did not do science for popularity and recognition. Dr. Rizal did science for change, he did science for the people.”

Guevara added that both scientists and engineers have the possibility to become modern day heroes just like Rizal during his time. “And just like Rizal, we at DOST are committed in furthering our science, technology, and innovation efforts to make positive change happen.” (JMLazcano, DOST-STII)