Wu Lien-teh
Wu Lien-teh | |
---|---|
伍連德 | |
University of Halle - Advance Diploma in Bacteriological Studies - Master of Medicine
Pasteur Institute - Master of Medicine in Infectious Diseases University of Cambridge University of Cambridge - Doctor of Medicine | |
Occupation(s) | Medical Doctor, Physician, Researcher |
Years active | 1903–1959 |
Known for | Work on the Manchurian Plague of 1910–11 |
Notable work | Plague Fighter: The Autobiography of a Modern Chinese Physician |
Children | 7 |
Wu Lien-teh | |
---|---|
Hanyu Pinyin | Wǔ Liándé |
Wade–Giles | Wu3 Lien2-tê2 |
Yue: Cantonese | |
Jyutping | Ng5 Lin4 Dak1 |
Southern Min | |
Hokkien POJ | Gó͘ Liân-tek |
Wu Lien-teh (Chinese: 伍連德; pinyin: Wǔ Liándé; Jyutping: Ng5 Lin4 Dak1; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Gó͘ Liân-tek; Goh Lean Tuck and Ng Leen Tuck in Minnan and Cantonese transliteration respectively; 10 March 1879 – 21 January 1960) was a Malayan physician renowned for his work in public health, particularly the Manchurian plague of 1910–11. He is the inventor of the Wu mask, which is the forerunner of today's N95 respirator.
Wu was the first medical student of
Life and education
Wu was born in
Wu was admitted to
Wu returned to the Straits Settlements in 1903. Some time after that, he married Ruth Shu-chiung Huang, whose sister was married to Lim Boon Keng, a physician who promoted social and educational reforms in Singapore.[4] The sisters were daughters of Wong Nai Siong, a Chinese revolutionary leader and educator who had moved to the area from 1901 to 1906.[4]
Wu and his family moved to China in 1907.[4] During his time in China, Wu's wife and two of their three sons died.[4] While Ms Huang lived in Peking, Wu started a second family in Shanghai with Marie Lee Sukcheng, whom he had met in Manchuria.[1] Wu had four children with Lee.
During the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, in November 1931, Wu was detained and interrogated by the Japanese authorities under suspicion of being a Chinese spy.[4]
In 1937, during the Japanese occupation of much of China and the retreat of the Nationalists, Wu was forced to flee, returning to the Settlements to live in Ipoh. His home and all his ancient Chinese medical books were burnt.[9][4]
In 1943 Wu was captured by Malayan left-wing resistance fighters and held for ransom. Then he nearly was prosecuted by the Japanese for supporting the resistance movement by paying the ransom, but was protected by having treated a Japanese officer.[4]
Career
In September 1903, Wu joined the Institute for Medical Research in Kuala Lumpur as the first research student. However, there was no specialist post for him because, at that time, a two-tier medical system in the British colonies provided that only British nationals could hold the highest positions of fully qualified medical officers or specialists. Wu spent his early medical career researching beri-beri and roundworms (Ascarididae) before entering private practice toward the end of 1904 in Chulia Street, George Town, Penang.[5]
Opium
Wu was a vocal commentator on the social issues of the time. In the early 1900s, he became friends with Lim Boon Keng and Song Ong Siang, a lawyer who was active in developing Singapore's civil society. He joined them in editing The Straits Chinese Magazine.[4] With his friends, Wu founded the Anti-Opium Association in Penang. He organised a nationwide anti-opium conference in the spring of 1906 that was attended by approximately 3000 people.[10][4] This attracted the attention of the powerful forces involved in the lucrative trade of opium and, in 1907, this led to a search and subsequent discovery of one ounce of tincture of opium in Wu's dispensary, for which he was convicted and fined.[4]
In 1908, Dr Wu accepted the then Grand Councillor Yuan Shikai's offer to become the Vice Director of the Imperial Army Medical College, now known as the Army Medical College, based in Tianjin, in 1908. This was established to train doctors for the Chinese Army.[3]
Pneumonic plague
In the winter of 1910, Wu was given instructions from the Foreign Office of the Imperial Qing court[11] in Peking, to travel to Harbin to investigate an unknown disease that killed 99.9% of its victims.[12] This was the beginning of the large pneumonic plague epidemic of Manchuria and Mongolia, which ultimately claimed 60,000 lives.[13]
Wu was able to conduct a
Wu initiated a quarantine, arranged for buildings to be disinfected, and the old plague hospital to be burned down and replaced.[4] The measure that Wu is best remembered for was in asking for imperial sanction to cremate plague victims.[4] It was impossible to bury the dead because the ground was frozen, and the bodies could only be disposed of by soaking them in paraffin and burning them on pyres.[3] Cremation of these infected victims turned out to be the turning point of the epidemic; days after cremations began, plague began to decline and within months it had been eradicated.[19]
Wu chaired the International Plague Conference in Mukden (Shenyang) in April 1911, a historic event attended by scientists from the United States of America, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia, Mexico, and China.[20][21] The conference took place over three weeks and featured demonstrations and experiments.
Wu later presented a plague research paper at the International Congress of Medicine, London in August 1911 which was published in The Lancet in the same month.
At the plague conference,
Later career
This article is missing information about this seems to be missing information about his life post WWII, a pivotal time in history.(March 2021) |
In 1912, Wu became the first director of the Manchurian Plague Service. He was a founder member and first president of the Chinese Medical Association (1916–1920).[3][23]
Wu led the efforts to combat the 1920-21 cholera pandemic in the north-east of China.[4]
In 1929, he was appointed a trustee of the 'Nanyang Club' in Penang by Cheah Cheang Lim, along with Wu Lai Hsi, Robert Lim Kho Seng, and Lim Chong Eang. The 'Nanyang Club', an old house in Beiping, China, provided convenient accommodation to overseas Chinese friends.[10]
In the 1930s he became the first director of the National Quarantine Service.[3]
Around 1939, Wu moved back to Malaya and continued to work as a general practitioner in Ipoh.[4]
Wu collected donations to start the Perak Library (Now the Tun Razak Library) in Ipoh, a free-lending public library, and donated to Shanghai City Library and the University of Hong Kong.[4]
Wu was a mandarin of the second rank[clarification needed] and sat on advisory committees for the League of Nations. He was given awards by the Czar of Russia and the President of France, and was awarded honorary degrees by Johns Hopkins University, Peking University, University of Hong Kong, and University of Tokyo.[3][4]
Death and commemoration
Wu practised medicine until his death at the age of 80. He had bought a new house in Penang for his retirement and had just completed his 667-page autobiography, Plague Fighter, the Autobiography of a Modern Chinese Physician.[12] On 21 January 1960, he died of a stroke while in his home in Penang.[5]
A road named after Wu can be found in Ipoh Garden South, a middle-class residential area in Ipoh. In Penang, a residential area named Taman Wu Lien Teh is located near the Penang Free School.[24] In that school, his alma mater, a house has been named after him. There is a Dr. Wu Lien-teh Society, Penang.[25][26]
The Wu Lien-teh Collection, which comprises 20,000 books, was given by Wu to the Nanyang University, which later became part of the National University of Singapore.[5]
The Art Museum of the University of Malaya has a collection of Wu's paintings.[4]
In 1995, Wu's daughter, Dr. Yu-lin Wu, published a book about her father, Memories of Dr. Wu Lien-teh, Plague Fighter.[27]
In 2015, the Wu Lien-Teh Institute opened at Harbin Medical University.[14] In 2019, The Lancet launched an annual Wakley-Wu Lien Teh Prize in honour of Wu and the publication's founding editor, Thomas Wakley.[28]
Dr. Wu Lien-teh is regarded as the first person to modernise China's medical services and medical education. In Harbin Medical University, bronze statues of him commemorate his contributions to public health, preventive medicine, and medical education.[29]
Places named after Wu Lien-Teh
- Dr Wu Lien-Teh Centre for Research on Communicable Diseases, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman
- Wu Lien-Teh Institute, Harbin Medical University
Commemoration during the COVID-19 pandemic
Wu's work in the field of epidemiology had contemporary relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic.[15][26][30]
In May 2020, Dr. Yvonne Ho united the 22 known "medical and scientific descendants" of Dr. Wu Lien-Teh for a video conference meeting spanning 14 cities around the world.[31][32] In July 2020, some of these medical and scientific descendants collaborated to publish an article to memorialize Dr. Wu's lifetime work in public health.[33] In August 2020, a second group of Wu's medical and scientific descendants collaborated on a similar piece.[34]
In March 2021, Wu was honoured with a Google Doodle, depicting Wu assembling surgical masks and distributing them to reduce the risk of disease transmission.[35][36][37]
References
- ^ a b Wu, Lien-teh (1959). Plague fighter: the autobiography of a modern Chinese physician. Cambridge, England: W. Heffer.
- ^ Wu, Lien-Teh (April 2020). "The Nomination Database for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1901–1953".
- ^ ISSN 0140-6736.
- ^ PMID 24570319.
- ^ a b c d "Wu Lien Teh 伍连徳 – Resource Guides". National Library Singapore. 26 September 2018. Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- ^ "Tuck, Gnoh Lean (Wu Lien-Teh) (TK896GL)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- )
- ^ "anna dumont twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 8 November 2022.
- ISSN 0140-6736.
- ^ ISBN 9789675719202
- ^ "The Chinese Doctor Who Beat the Plague". China Channel. 20 December 2018. Retrieved 10 March 2021.
- ^ PMC 1966655.
- PMID 11613294.
- ^ PMID 26825808.
- ^ a b c d Wilson, Mark (24 March 2020). "The untold origin story of the N95 mask". Fast Company. Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- ^ Wu Lien-te; World Health Organization (1926). A Treatise on Pneumonic Plague. Berger-Levrault.
- PMID 30427733.
- ^ Wilson, Mark (24 March 2020). "The untold origin story of the N95 mask". Fast Company. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
- ISBN 978-1-317-14383-3.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-300-18476-1.
- ^ "Inaugural address delivered at the opening of the International Plague Conference, Mukden, April 4th, 1911". Wellcome Collection. 1911. Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- S2CID 145299676.
- ISBN 978-1-108-41777-8]
- ^ Article in Chinese. "Picture of "Taman Wu Lien Teh"". Archived from the original on 27 August 2011. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
- ^ "The Dr. Wu Lien-Teh Society, Penang 槟城伍连徳学会 | Celebrating the life of the man who brought modern medicine to China, who fought the Manchurian plague, and who set the standard for generations of doctors to follow. 伍连德博士 : 斗疫防治,推进医学 , 歌颂国士无双". Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- ^ a b Wai, Wong Chun (11 February 2020). "Wu Lien-Teh: Malaysia's little-known plague virus fighter". The Star Online. Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- ISBN 978-981-02-2287-1.
- S2CID 205990913.
- ^ Article in Chinese. "130th memorial of Dr. Wu Lien-the". Archived from the original on 24 March 2012. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
- ^ Toh, Han Shih (1 February 2020). "Lessons from Chinese Malaysian plague fighter for Wuhan virus". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- ^ "Home". DrYvonneHo.com.
- ^ "Home". DrWuLienTeh.com.
- ^ Liu, Ling Woo (18 July 2020). "The Good Doctor". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 25 July 2020.
- ^ Ho, Yvonne (30 August 2020). "The Good Doctor from Penang". The Star. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
- ^ Musil, Steven (9 March 2021). "Google Doodle celebrates Dr. Wu Lien-teh, surgical mask pioneer". CNET. Archived from the original on 12 March 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
- ^ Sam Wong (10 March 2021). "Dr Wu Lien-teh: Face mask pioneer who helped defeat a plague epidemic". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 12 March 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
- ^ Phoebe Zhang (11 March 2021). "Google honours Chinese-Malaysian face mask pioneer Doctor Wu Lien-teh, whose surgical face covering is seen as origin of N95". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 12 March 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
Further reading
- Wu Lien-Teh, 1959. Plague Fighter: The Autobiography of a Modern Chinese Physician. Cambridge. (Reprint: Areca Books. 2014)[ISBN missing]
- Yang, S. 1988. "Dr. Wu Lien-teh and the national maritime quarantine service of China in 1930s". Zhonghua Yi Shi Za Zhi 18:29–32.
- Wu Yu-Lin. 1995. Memories of Dr. Wu Lien-Teh: Plague Fighter. World Scientific Pub Co Inc.ISBN 981-02-2287-4
- Flohr, Carsten. 1996. "The plague fighter: Wu Lien-teh and the beginning of the Chinese public health system". Annals of Science 53:361–80
- Gamsa, Mark. 2006. "The Epidemic of Pneumonic Plague in Manchuria 1910–1911". Past & Present 190:147–183
- Lewis H. Mates, ‘Lien-Teh, Wu’, in Douglas Davies with Lewis H. Mates (eds), Encyclopedia of Cremation (Ashgate, 2005): 300–301. Lien-Teh, Wu
- Penang Free School archive PFS Online