Nagaraja Chapter 4 Part 5

Next page : dinosaurusgede.deviantart.com/…
Previous page : dinosaurusgede.deviantart.com/…

This part inspired by Noli me Tangere Chapter 61 : The Chase On The Lake.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, Dr. Jose Rizal was a real ophthalmologist 

Excerpts from the lecture "Jose Rizal: Healer as Hero" delivered at the Sentro Oftalmologico Jose Rizal, University of the Philippines
Philippine General Hospital, on June 21, 2011, as part of the 150th birth anniversary of Dr. Jose Rizal

Ophthalmology was not Dr. Rizal real passion. But like his political writings for which he is most famous, and which sparked the first revolution for freedom in Asia and led him to a destiny he did not plan for himself, his becoming an ophthalmologist was also driven primarily by love. He wrote what he wrote because of a deep love for country. He became an ophthalmologist because of a deep love for his mother. His suffering Motherland was under an abusive and oppressive foreign power and through his written work he hoped to open the eyes of both his countrymen and the Spanish authorities. He longed to give his mother sight just as he longed to bring vision to his “blind†countrymen. He wanted to heal them both. 

In this quest, he also achieved one of the major driving forces in his life. In 1858, three years before Rizal was born, Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong, visited Rizal’s Uncle Alberto in Binan. Sir John imparted a lot of knowledge to Alberto Alonzo, and most significant among them was information about a book by the Spaniard Morga, written in 1609, that documented the situation in the Philippines when the Spaniards first arrived in the 1500s. These stories were passed on to Rizal and were engraved in his heart. This knowledge in the face of the injustice he and his family experienced under the Spaniards inspired him to look for and copy this book one day if only to prove that, contrary to what the Spanish imperialists of his time claimed, the Philippines had a rich culture and advanced civilization before the Spaniards came.1 He carried this dream with him throughout adulthood and fulfilled it more than 20 years later. He wanted to spread the word to his own countrymen and to foreigners alike, that we had an identity distinct from that of our conquerors, an identity we could be proud of, an identity we had to rediscover and nurture, because that would be our ticket to real freedom. His quest to become an ophthalmologist afforded him the opportunity to acquire the tools to do just this. His quest to become an ophthalmologist also provided him with the stage to be the best poster boy the Philippines and the Filipinos could have. 

Source : paojournal.com/vol36no2/vol36n…
Additional Reading : archopht.jamanetwork.com/artic…

Nagaraja belongs to