Except for Cuu Long, a Vietnamese-owned restaurant that once operated in the 1990s along San Pedro Street, Davao City, formal relationship with Vietnam in this part of the archipelago is largely superficial. If indeed there is any association, no matter how ambiguous, it is through a pejorative term known as ‘Vietnam Rose,’ which has now become part of urban dictionary.
Though linked with a real rose with the same appellation (Portulaca grandiflora), Vietnam Rose refers chiefly to two venereal diseases (i.e., gonorrhea and syphilis) that afflicted American servicemen during the Vietnam War and thereafter. In today’s politically correct terminologies, sexual illnesses are called sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) or infections.
Vietnam rose is regarded as the Chinese nickname for gonorrhea and is described as a ‘large open red sore that appears on the penis of persons infected with syphilis.’
In Spanish time, the palo de China, known also as China root, ‘formerly had great repute for the cure of venereal diseases as well as for gout’ but has since been obsolete after medical research disputed its archaic usages. Today, it is associated with palettes used in packing.
Writing in 1859, Sir John Bowring, in ‘A Visit to the Philippine Islands,’ wrote: ‘Venereal diseases are widely spread, but easily cured.’ And in William H. Brown’s ‘Minor Products of Philippine Forests’ (1920), the plant (scientifically as Homonoia riparia Lour. or Lumanaja juviatilis Blanco) was used in Mindanao as an effective stimulant in treating venereal diseases; its roots were boiled to induce vomiting. The plant is known in Visayas as miagus, mayayos, or malabagus.
Historically, venereal diseases started becoming a social issue in 1918 following the banishment of 170 prostituted girls from Manila. A 1919 government report, chiefly based on medical figures gather by medical frontliners in the field, clearly explained this evolving problem:
“The arrival of the prostitutes from Manila also increased the incidence of gonorrhea. Out of a total of 130 cases reported in the Province of Davao, 126 occurred in the town of Davao. Once free from medical supervision, these girls began to spread around the province and with them the infection. This remittance was likened to an intravenous inoculation of the Province of Davao, with pathogenic organisms which spread all over its blood vascular system of transportation… Davao is especially prone to react to such a remittance because of the lack of women, and the use the men make of registered prostitutes. Of 1,952 laboratory specimens in Davao, 1,765 were uterine discharges from the prostitutes.”
The gonorrhea breakout in Davao compelled the colonial government to conduct a meticulous study on the capacities of native herbs as cure for venereal diseases, with uses ranging from decoction to intravenous application. Based on a 1918 report, Davao recorded five syphilis and ten cases of pregnancy complications from gonorrhea.
Years later, Dr. Jose Fabella, as public welfare commissioner, sent a ‘Memorandum on Prostitution’ to the mayor of Manila, declaring: ‘I have been able to obtain statistics showing the prevalence (based on admission) of venereal diseases among the enlisted men in the Philippine Islands from 1898 to 1922,” [and the] “significant… drop of venereal diseases in the [United States] Army coincided exactly with the deportation of several hundred diseased prostitutes to Davao. The small increase since 1918 may be in part due to the fact that many of these women have returned to Manila and are spreading their infection without molestation. There is no law against prostitution, and there is no farm to which these girls can be sent.”
Though Vietnam rose has long been contained following the use of penicillin, an anti-bacterial drug, the traumatic experience it carries impacts more the self-respect of the afflicted persons.
