For the Philippines, the early years of the last century was an age of decay, despair and degeneration. From 1896 to 1902, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos perished during wars of resistance against both Spain and the United States. It was an era when concepts about physical health and well-being were ruled by superstition and illness was largely attributed to religious or spiritual phenomena. Smallpox, beriberi, malaria, cholera and even venereal disease plagued the cities. In an attempt to curb the spread of communicable diseases, the Americans filled up the stagnant, centuries-old moat surrounding the walled city of Intramuros and instituted draconian health measures to in Manila. The American Director of the Bureau of Health, Dr. Victor Heiser, who also served as the first director of the Philippine General Hospital, described the situation in his book, An American Doctor’s Odyssey —“When we arrived the hospitals were of the most primitive type. There was not a good operating room in the Islands and no laboratory facilities. Modern medicine had not penetrated far.”

It is during this time of struggle that the birth of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine is set. It is in such a setting that the beginnings of the College should be perceived and appreciated.

The Philippine Medical School, as the College was known then, was an outgrowth of an educational system instituted throughout the Philippine Islands by the occupying American administrators through the Philippine Commission of Five, the original governing body of the United States after the Spanish-American War of 1898, headed by William Howard Taft. It was also a natural development of the Bureau of Science, organized in 1901 and the Bureau of Health.

As early as 1900, Dean C. Worcester, then the Secretary of the Interior, formulated a plan to establish a central government laboratory, a medical school and a hospital all in one integral group – Worcester’s crazy dream, it was called. This was the seed of an idea for a medical center adopted in the United States much later.

In 1905, at the Second Annual Meeting of the Philippine Islands Medical Association, the proceedings demonstrated the great need for physicians in the countryside. Heiser wrote: “The ancient Santo Tomas University already had a medical school attached to it, but it was inadequate.” Statistics at the time showed that there was one physician for every 21, 209 persons, or one for every 430 square miles of territory.

On December 1, 1905, the Philippine Medical School was established by the Philippine Commission as the first department of the future University of the Philippines under Act No. 1415, and was opened on June 10, 1907. With American curricular requirements, it was first housed in the old building of the School for the Deaf and Blind on Malecon Drive (now Bonifacio Drive). The present-day main building of the college was built along what is now Pedro Gil Street with an appropriation of P 250,000.00 and was opened on July 1, 1910. It accommodated the classrooms, laboratories and the morgue; only a handful of students were in attendance using very limited equipment loaned by various government institutions. Serving 5 years until 1912, Dr. Paul Freer was the medical school’s first dean. Within 4 years, Dr. Fernando Calderon became the first Filipino dean and first Filipino director of the Philippine General Hospital in 1916.

The construction of the Philippine General Hospital was started in 1908 when the Philippine Commission appropriated P 780,000.00 for its construction. It was patterned after the great Hamburg-Eppendorf Hospital in Hamburg, Germany. The 350-bed hospital was opened to the public on September 1, 1910. The hospital “will be named the Philippine General Hospital because it will be destined principally for the use of the Filipino people.”

On December 8, 1910, the control and management of the medical school was entrusted to the Board of Regents; and in accordance with Act No. 1870, the Philippine Medical School was renamed the College of Medicine and Surgery. On March 1, 1923, this was shortened to the name it is known by today— the College of Medicine.

On June 11, 1926, the Board of Regents appropriated P 200,000.00 for the construction of an annex to the main building, which opened on June 15, 1928, and today houses the Departments of Biochemistry, Pharmacology and Physiology. The Institute of Hygiene was established in 1932 and later became the College of Public Health. “The Filipinos made excellent physicians, once their dislike of dirtying their hands was overcome,” Heiser wrote. The establishment of the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine in 1939 marked the start of residency and fellowship training and Continuing Medical Education (CME) Programs.

The Japanese Occupation of the Philippines from 1942 to 1944 changed the landscape of Manila and left enduring marks on the history of the University. At the time, all units of the University of the Philippines except for the College of Medicine, were closed down, primarily to prevent disruption of work at the Philippine General Hospital. Dr. Antonio G. Sison was then the college dean and also served as president of the university for a time. “It was felt that the people needed the continued medical and hospital ministrations more during those crucial days than at any other period in the past.”

During the liberation of Manila in early 1945, the buildings suffered heavy damage from shell and incendiary fire. The medical annex was completely destroyed. With the help of the U. S. Army Medical Corps, buildings were rapidly rebuilt and renovated. Within 6 months of the liberation of Manila, classes recommenced with the College of Medicine at the nucleus of the resuscitated university. Through the United States – Philippines War Damage Commission and the Mutual Security Agency (later the International Cooperation Administration of the U.S. government), construction of many of the buildings resumed with the acquisition of teaching equipment, apparatus and books.

In 1949, with the transfer of the University of the Philippines to a new site in Diliman, Quezon City; the College of Medicine was one of the few units left in Manila. In 1952, the China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation bestowed a U.S. $ 200,000.00 grant on the College for the construction of the three-story Medical Library and Science Hall building. The academic and physical rehabilitation of the college and the Philippine General Hospital was largely attributed to the Dean at the time, Dr. Agerico B.M. Sison.

The succeeding post-war deans continued to respond to the challenges of their times. The academic curriculum was subjected to reappraisals and revisions in response to the apparent lack of social consciousness and migration of U.P. medical graduates. The role of the college in the national health care delivery system was studied. Its financial position, modernization, relevance, teaching, research and training programs; its responsibilities in the changing political climate, functions in a rapidly evolving regional and international health conditions and other issues, at one time or another, have been examined. Amidst many other developments and improvements, graduate degree programs were initiated and new courses have been introduced through the years. There are presently 17 masteral and doctoral programs offered in 12 departments and units of the College.

On June 17, 1967, Republic Act No. 5163 authorizing the establishment of the Philippine Health Sciences Center, was signed into law. Budgetary problems, however, prevented the realization of this center at the Diliman campus. In 1977, the Health Sciences Center became an autonomous unit of the University of the Philippines system with former Dean Florentino Herrera, Jr. assuming the post of the first chancellor. The Health Sciences Center was later renamed the University of the Philippines- Manila, which then absorbed the U.P College of Medicine as decreed at the 956th meeting of the Board of Regents on December 17, 1982.

In an innovative experiment in medical education, the U.P. College of Medicine established the Institute, now School of Health Sciences (SHS) in Tacloban, Leyte in 1976. It aimed to develop community-oriented health workers who would return to render service in the underserved places of origin from where they were recruited. The school was a “model for shifting health sciences education towards community orientation and community-based learning.” It represented a bold strategy to neutralize the dual problems of “brain drain”, or the continuing exodus of more than 50 percent of Filipino physicians to more affluent countries like the Unites States; and the unbalanced distribution in the country of available health manpower, whose concentration in urban areas left some 70 percent of the Filipinos in the rural areas without adequate health and medical services. The SHS became an independent unit of the University of the Philippines Manila in 1989.

In another experiment, a seven-year curriculum that integrated the premedical course with medicine proper (INTARMED or Integrated Arts-Medicine Program) was launched in 1982. This pioneering effort provided exposure to the humanities and synchronized the basic and clinical disciplines. Exceptional high school graduates entered the College of Medicine through the INTARMED program and graduated at the end of seven years.

In 1991, the old Bureau of Mines building was renovated. Now known as the Paz Mendoza Hall, it houses the National Teachers’ Training Center for the Health Professions (NTTC-HP), the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and the Alumni Hall.

Through the years, the Experimental Animal Research Laboratory, the Tissue Bank, and the Multidisciplinary Laboratory were built. The Medical Education Unit the Medical Informatics Unit, and the Community-Oriented Medical Education Unit were established. The Departments of Clinical Epidemiology, Emergency Medicine, and Neurosciences were created. In the future, other buildings and programs will be built and developed. The dedication of the college to excellence and leadership in medical education, research and service to the underserved, remains.

One hundred years from now, the college will celebrate its bicentennial and will look back to the previous hundred years. The teaching and the practice of medicine as we know them today will have changed perhaps to something very much different. The U.P. College of Medicine will continue to evolve and transform itself to adapt to a constantly shifting landscape of health and technology, science and society. It will meet ever emerging ethical, social and cultural issues. Smallpox, beriberi and cholera will give way to cloning, molecular medicine, stem cell and gene therapy. “Everywhere, the old order changes”, Sir William Osler wrote; “and happy are they who can change with it.”