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5 Pesos
| Issuer | Commonwealth of the Philippines, Bureau of Health, Culion Leper Colony |
|---|---|
| Year | 1942 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Culion leper colony peso (1913-1944) |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Plain, nearly blank reverse on aged off-white paper, with faint letterpress text at the top reading 'THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS' followed by partially legible lines referencing public instructions, the overall surface showing evidence of folds and toning consistent with wartime circulation. |
| Reverse lettering | THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS |
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| Comments |
Culion Island, in the Palawan group, housed one of the world's largest leprosy colonies — at its peak in the 1930s, over 6,000 patients were interned there under a Philippine government quarantine policy. Because residents could not circulate currency in the wider economy, the colony issued its own scrip for internal use. This series dates to the Japanese occupation period, when the Bureau of Health continued administering Culion under considerable disruption to supply lines and institutional funding.
The scrip was not symbolic — it functioned as the sole medium of exchange within the colony's boundaries. Later Culion issues are among the more seriously collected of all Philippine emergency and special-purpose notes, partly due to attrition: paper stored in a tropical isolation colony does not survive well.