DR WU LIEN-TEH

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 258, 28 September 1935, Page 4

DR WU LIEN-TEH

EMINENT CHINESE PHYSICIAN. F. M. Cutlack writes in the Sydney Morning Herald A Chinese boy, born in the Straits Settlements of immigrant parents, who by hard work won a scholarship at Cambridge, outdistanced his contemporaries there in the medical school, made a name for himself m research in bacteriology and preventive medicine, led a great fight against plague in Manchuria, and is to-day renowned in scientific circles all over the world—such is the romantic story of Dr. Wu Lien-Teh, who came to Australia to the Medical Congress, representing the Chinese Government.

At the age of 56 he" looks back upon a career that many a man might envy. Ho is an M.D. and a B.S. of Cambridge, honorary LL.D. of Hong Kong and D.Sc. of Shanghai Universities, D. Litt. of the Imperial University of Peking, Doctor of Medicine of the Imperial University of Tokio (a rare honour for any non-Japanese), holds the C.P.H. from the John Hopkins University of Baltimore, and was awarded the Order of Stanislaus by the Czar of Russia, and the Legion of Honour by the French Government. He speaks English. French, and German, and has lectured and written for scientific journals in China, Japan, India, Java, the United States, and most countries in Europe. His work in the field and in administration of public health is one of the outstanding examples which has encouraged the League of Nations in its efforts to promise the renascence of modem China.

Dr. Wu’s career reads like a fairy tale. He has written what he calls “a short autobiography” for the League’s Plague Prevention Service reports, in which he relates that he was born in 1879 at Penang. “My father was of the usual Cantonese emigrant typ.e, who left his village home to make liis fortune. My motlier belonged to the second generation of Chinese in Malaya, her father being an emigrant, but her mother descended from resident Hakka parents, those sturdy, fearless peasants of China who, though possessing no province of their own, are able to succeed in business where others fail.” He was at the Penang Free School at the age of 7, stayed there ten years, and learned to read and write English. ENTERED CAMBRIDGE.

In 1896, after efforts in three successive years, he won the Queen’s Scholarship in examination at Singapore, and thus was enabled to enter at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, for ; the study of science and medicine. The value of the scholarship was only £2OO i a year, but lie made it suffice for all 'living and travelling expenses, clothing, fees, and the rest. At the end of liis second year he won a college exhibition of £4O, “which enabled me to partially return the hospitality I had earlier received from my friends,” and next year obtained lirst class honours m the natural sciences tripos for the 8.A., and was awarded a foundation scholarship of £SO.

In 1899 he moved to London, and won the University scholarship at St. Mary’s Hospital open to graduates of British universities. After two and a half years here he qualified as M. 8., 8.5., being the only medical student of the 1896 class of 135 at Cambridge to accomplish that task in the short

period of five and a quarter years. Among his prizes were the Chea Gold Medal in clinical medicine and the Kerslake Scholarship in and bacteriology. Emmaniiel \P le go offered him a research studentship or £l5O a year for 1902-3, and he spent it in working at malaria and tetanus under Dr (later Sir) Ronald Ross at the School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, then under Professor Karl Fraenkel at Halle, Germany, and lastly under Professor Elie Mutchnikoff at the Pasteur Institute in 1 am. “I acquired a fair knowledge of German and French.” he writes, without a teacher, by mixing freely among the people and sharing their tastes and enjoyments, however humble these might be.” On his return to England he was advised by the Regius Professor of Physics at Cambridge, oir Thomas Clifford Allbutt, to use the results of his investigations of tetanus for his M.D. thesis.

PLAGUE AND CHOLERA. After six months as house physician at Brompton Hospital for Consumption, Dr Wu returned to the Straits Settlements, studied beriberi at the Kuala I Lumpur Institute, married, and spent three years in private practice in Penang. But wider service called him, and in 1907 he visited China for the first time and was invited by Viceroy Yuan Shih-kai to .join the Chinese Army Medical Service. He was ViceDirector of the Army Medical College in Tientsin when the great Manchurian plague epidemic of 1910-11 broke out. “This dreadful outbreak offered unrivalled opportunities for research, for up to then very little had been known of the infection, and much initiative as well as courage was required for its prevention and treatment. I acted virtually as commander-in-chief of the huge organisation, and gave orders to doctors, police, military and civil officials alike. The most dramatic phase was when I boldly asked for Imperial sanction to cremate •‘'COO odd plague corpses which had Jror weeks being lying unburied because of lack of coolies and the frozen state of the ground. ■Permission was finally granted.” The j last case was recorded four weeks after Imperial sanction was received for cremation. The Manchurian epidemic spread into Chihli and Shantung, and caused 60,000 deaths. Thereafter Dr Wu was commanded to organise the Mukden Plague Conference of 1911, at which experts from 11 leading nations participated and a special prevention service was instituted to- study • the disease and cope with future outbreaks. “The high rank of major of the Imperial Army, with the blue button, was conferred upon me overnight, so as to enable me to receive Imperial audience without unnecessary formalities.” There followed the Hague Opium Conferences of 1911 and 1912, and on the establishment of the Chinese Republic Dr Wu was appointed Physician Extraordinary to its first President. The National Medical Association of China was launched under his urging, and in 1915 he persuaded Hong Kong University authorities to a more liberal policy in giving appointments to promising Chinese doctors. In 1916 Dr Wu planned, raised the funds tor, and supervised the building of the splendid Pekin Central Hospital, then the finest and most up-to-date institution of its kind in China. The South Manchurian Railway Company requested a copy of its plans for the modelling of their own fine new hospital at Dairen, which was completed in 1926. Dr Wu went through a second pneumonic plague

epidemic in North China in 1917, ami in Manchuria a serious cholera epidemic in 1919, followed bv a second nlague outbreak in the following winter The organisation he had established greatly circumscribed its scope and limited the severity of this visitation to 8000 victims, though the local population had doubled since the outbreak of 1911 “The world now accepts our contention that the Mongolian marmot (tarabagan), whose size is that of a cat and whose thick fur is much valued is the main reservoir of the cerm causing pneumonic plague, and that handling of the sick annual or its freshly dissected skin by the hunter is” liable to pass the infection on to him The insanitary underground inns, where these hunters live in winter to escape the severe cold, largely contribute to the spread of an epidemic.” WORLD-WIDE RECOGNITION. Dr Wu submitted as a thesis to tlie Imperial University of Tokio liis treatise on pneumonic .plague, which he finished in 1926, the result of 15 years’ practical research. For tins lie received the honour of igaku-hakuslii (doctor of medicine), a Tokio degree never previously granted to any foreigner. His book was published by ths League of Nations in the same year, and in 1927, at the invitation of the League, he made a four months tour of the principal health centres and research institutions throughout Europe, Late in 1927 he attended the Congress of Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine at Calcutta, and thereafter examined the Indian medical service on a tour of 12,000 miles through that country. . Dr Wu is now chief technical expert of the Nanking Ministry of Health, and liis experience and ripe judgment have made him an optimist. Speaking from his world-wide experience* he declares that “medical work in China looks much rosier than it has ever done before . . . Still more has to be done, and I am always oil the lookout for colleagues who do not mind .hard tasks, long hours, a simple life, and severe training.” That has been bis own lifelong discipline. He was invited to the Australian congress by Dr Cumpston, of Canberra, and was a guest our own school of tropical medicine was delighted to honour.