Olivia Salamanca

Career

Salamanca returned to the Philippines in July 1910. She was one of the charter members and the first secretary of the Philippine Anti-Tuberculosis Society, which was founded in 1910; later that year, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis herself. In 1911, she was assigned to work at a hospital in Baguio, a city in a mountainous area, in order for the mountain air to help improve her health. She wrote in a 1911 diary entry that she was the first person in the Philippines to receive tuberculin as a treatment for tuberculosis, saying: "If tuberculin proves effective in the care of T.B. by the experiment made on me, I would feel as if I have rendered a public service to humanity. Should it fail ... then I shall be glad also for it would save many from its dangers."