PHILIPPINES

PHILIPPINES / PILIPINAS.

Fight against tuberculosis.
Cross of Lorraine on map of Philippines.
Last stamp in a set of 3, issued on 19.08.1963.
Face value: 50+5 cents of Philippine peso.
Printing: Recess.

Catalogues
- Michel No. Z14.
- Scott No. B25,
- Stanley Gibbons No. 937.
- Yvert et Tellier No. 569.

Tuberculosis is one of the oldest diseases affecting humanity, it is estimated that it is between 15,000 to 20,000 years old. The fight against this disease goes back a long way, but only from the 17th century began to use substances from America in Europe (cinchona, coffee, tea, cocoa and tobacco). In the 18th century it was proposed to transfer the sick to the countryside to exercise and follow a proper diet in a healthy environment, and the application of a therapy consisting of bloodletting, emetic, purgative, balms, expectorants or opium. In the middle of the 20th century, the antibacterial properties of the Streptomyces griseum fungus were discovered, which in 1944 gave rise to the development of streptomycin. From that moment on, new treatments were developed, but although it has been reduced, the disease has not yet disappeared. The Cross of Lorraine was adopted as a symbol of the fight against tuberculosis at an international congress on the disease held in Berlin in 1902, as a suggestion of French physician Gilbert Sersiron.