<div class="image-550">
<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-18/dr-antonio-luna-2.webp" loading="lazy" alt="Antonio Luna" />
<div>
(Antonio Luna poses with a microscope at the Institut Pasteur in Paris)
</div>
</div>
<p>
Antonio Luna, 13 years younger than Guerrero had followed the same route in the pharmacy course at the UST. He would, however, be packed off to Europe in the shadow of the GOMBURZA martyrdom and would wind up finishing his degree in Barcelona. It is said that he deliberately went after a doctorate in pharmacy in order to become the first Filipino to earn this title. He captured it in Madrid from the same university where Dr. Jose Rizal and the rest of the Ilustrados studied.
</p>
<p>
In the annals of pharmacy, Luna was Guerrero's archrival, competing for this or that important scientific award or position. It is a measure of both men's genius that their achievements would be routinely mistaken in the history books for one or the other.
</p>
<p>
But these men were not just on the vanguard of scientific exploration; they were also in the eye of a storm of political unrest and the painful self-realization of a nation. It was no accident that Rizal described these times in terms of disease and cancers.
</p>


<p>
Antonio Luna would next move to Paris with his brother. Then, as now, the city was a center for medical breakthroughs and he worked with the scientists that would form the Institut Pasteur. Luna became fascinated with vaccines and began an inquiry on whether inoculations could curb disease. He delved into the 19th-century scourge of malaria.
</p>
<div class="image-550">
<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-18/leon-ma-querrero.webp" loading="lazy" alt="Leon Ma. Guerrero" />
<div>
(Leon Ma. Guerrero, later in life)
</div>
</div>
<p>
Both men would become caught up in the Philippine-American War. Luna would become a ferocious general thanks to applying the logic of scientific principles to the art of war. Guerrero did the same by using his knowledge of botany to infuse scarce bullets with poison, making them doubly lethal.
</p>
<p>
It was Leon Ma. Guerrero who would survive and become a leading light of the Philippine scientific establishment. He would become a member of the Philippine board of the St. Louis Exposition and founded in 1904 the Liceo de Manila or the Escuela de Farmacia del Liceo de Manila (present day Manila Central University). Guerrero pushed his interest in botany to find herbal cures for practically everything that ailed the Filipino. His research is unmatched to this day.
</p>
<p>
Source:
</p>
<ol class="article-sources">
<li>
The First Filipino Pharmacists: Dreamers First, Scientists Second, Lisa Guerrero Nakpil, December 13, 2020, https://www.philstar.com/ 
</li>
<li>
Brief History of Pharmacy in the Philippines, https://www.unilab.com.ph/
</li>
</ol>



The first Filipino Pharmacists: Leon Ma. Guerrero and Antonio Luna