Jose Felix Arcinas Quirino

He was born in Manila on January 30, 1884, the only child of Vicente Quirino and Trinidad Arcinas, both residents of Binondo.

Jose learned his ABCs from his mother at the age of six, then studied at the school of his father in San Fernando. But since this school taught only the first two years of the segunda ensenanza, he went to Manila to study in the school of Don Ignacio Villamor, later President of the University of the Philippines, and at the Ateneo de Manila in Intramuros. His parents closed their school in Pampanga to be with their son, and opened another school at Calle Elcano in the San Nicholas district of Manila.

The Revolution of 1896-7 interrupted his last year at the Ateneo, but instead of waiting for classes to open Jose spent his time taking piano lessons under a certain Sr. Garcia and learned English from a tutor. He obtained his bachillerato in 1898 with the grades of excellent. During the two or three years that he studied under the Jesuits, he received various medals and diplomas.

Jose, or “Moy” as his parents called him, then enrolled in the school of medicine at the University of Santo Tomas in Intramuros, and graduated with the degree of Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery in March of 1904, again with the rating of excellent. He was such an assiduous and bright student who made high grades, and so impressed one of his professors, Dr. Gregorio Singian, that the latter immediately took him after graduation as an assistant in his clinic. Several months later, Jose opened his own consultorio at his home on Callejon Gonzalez in the Ermita district, a little side street connecting San Marcelino and Nozaleda (now General Luna) streets.

By 1908 he had saved enough money from his medical practice to go abroad for graduate courses. He had a rich cousin named Ignacio Syyap, who was suffering from some ailment that needed the attention of foreign specialists, and took the opportunity of accompanying him to Europe for treatment. They left Manila on February 22, on a Meesageries Maritime vessel for Genoa, Italy, and from there headed straight for Berlin, at that time the center of advanced techniques in the medical profession. He entered the Charitee Clinic in Berlin as an assistant of Dr. Bumm, the famous toxicologist and gynecologist, and then moved to other hospitals studying the techniques of other well-known doctors. For some time he stayed in Kiel, then in Munich, before returning to Manila on December 23, 1908, in time to be home with his family on Christmas.

“Despite his short length of time in Germany,” relates a fellow physician, “ he studied the German language to a point of perfection such that some Germans in Manila who had spoken to him in this tongue could not understand how in the short space of eight months he had been able to express himself so well in their language. He was therefore one of the very few Filipino physicians who, knowing the language, shared the scientific knowledge he had obtained in Germany. Free from egotism, a lover of progressive ideas in the medical science of his country, he hastened to transmit to his colleagues what he had seen and read in the medical journals which he continued receiving from Germany, without hiding anything of value to the profession.”

Dr. Quirino stayed less than a year in Germany, specializing in gynecology, particularly in the newly discovered application of scopolamine for “difficult” cases of childbirth, and the treatment of cancer and was one of the first Filipino physicians to specialize in painless childbirth, then known as “twilight sleep”. It was at this time that he met in Manila another Quirino, a young but still obscure law student named Elpidio from Vigan, Ilocos Sur. “Quirino as a family name in the Philippines is rather rare,” related the latter, when he was already President of the Philippine Republic.

A year after his father Vicente's death in 1911, Dr. Quirino moved his entire family to their new home a block away, not far from Paco Cemetery. Here he opened a larger office, a clinic specializing in women’s diseases; he had a large clientele, among them Dna. Aurora Aragon who later became Mrs. Manuel L. Quezon, for his fame a gynecologist spread rapidly, since his return from Europe. He taught some courses at University of Santo Tomas, according to one of his former students, Dr. Basilio J. Valdes.

Dr. Quirino’s fondness for that new-fangled contraption, the automobile, which he had grown to like while he was in Europe, proved to be his undoing. Late in 1913 he bought an Ames Continental touring car with an open top ordered especially from the United States, and derived much pleasure driving behind the wheel, for there were not many professional chauffeurs in the city at that time.

In the afternoon of November 9, 1913, he bundled his entire family (composed of his widowed mother Trinidad Arcinas, his wife Dolores Lozada, young sons Felix and Carlos and a young man who cleaned the car, for a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage in Antipolo.

After having said their prayers at the town church, they drove back at dusk for Manila. The gravel roads were then not as wide or smooth as today; in negotiating one of the hairpin turns, the car got out of control and plunged down the steep side of a hill. The automobile rolled over once, then shuddered to a halt at the bottom. The women screamed and the children cried in fright. All of the passengers were safe and sound, except for minor scratches and bruises – miraculously, so it seemed. But not for Dr. Quirino. The wooden steering wheel had snapped with the fall, and the jagged edge had entered into his heart. He was bleeding profusely from the mouth and nose. His death had been almost instantaneous.

When Don Juan Sumulong in Antipolo heard of it from passers-by, he and the parish priest immediately rushed to the scene of the accident – but there was little they could do to help. On board a carretela or horse rig they brought the corpse back to the town, as the disconsolate widow and mother wept their hearts out in sorrow. “A mother could not have asked for a better son than him,” Dna. Trining repeated in the years to come.“Nor a wife a better husband,” added Dna. Dolores.

“From the time of his arrival in 1908 to the time of his fatal accident in 1913,” said the speaker at his necrological service, “by dint of application, perseverance, activity, unusual zeal and professional disinterestedness, Dr. Quirino succeeded in reaching the front ranks of renowned physicians in this capital (Manila), particularly distinguishing himself as an able surgeon in the speciality he had consecrated himself. May our unfortunate companion rest in peace, and may his memory serve as an imperishable example to that new generation of young Filipinos who have enthusiastically embraced that noble medical profession for the honor and glory of our country.”

Jose Felix A. Quirino was one of the first Filipino physicians to specialize in painless childbirth, then known as “twilight sleep”. Dr. Quirino died a car accident, driving with his family from the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage in Antipolo -- the first recorded fatality from a motor vehicle accident in the Philippines. More here: http://bit.ly/TBdgHI.