Plague Fighter: Dr Wu Lien Teh

Dr Wu Lien Teh was born in Penang in the Straits Settlement on 10 March 1879. His father was a fresh immigrant from Taishan, China. His mother was a second generation Straits Chinese in Malaya. Her family originated from China. He had four brothers and six sisters.

He attended the Penang Free School in George Town. A high achiever, he won the prestigious Queen Victoria 'Queen's Scholarship' in Singapore, and went to the UK at age 17. He was admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge University in 1896. On record, he was the first Straits born Chinese in Malaya to study medicine at the University of Cambridge. He bagged all prizes and scholarships while he was at Cambridge University. He won the Cheadle gold medal for clinical medicine and the Kerslake scholarship in pathology. His undergraduate clinical years (usually years four and five) were spent at St Mary's Hospital in London.

He furthered his postgraduate studies at the School of Tropical Medicine in Germany and the Pasteur Institute in France.

After completing his studies in the UK, he returned to Malaya in 1903. However, the situation in British Malaya could not accommodate him. The British medical system in Malaya at the time could not accept him as he was not a British subject and non-British doctors could not hold any senior or specialist post within that system. Dr Wu Lien Teh instead researched on beri-beri at the newly opened Institute for Medical Research (IMR), Jalan Pahang in Kuala Lumpur, for four years (1903-1907). He finally quit and entered into private practice in 1907.

Opium was traded freely and used widely in Penang. The British provided opium to leper patients and miners. Dr Wu Lien Teh advocated the Chinese males to cut off their Manchu hair queue (long braided hair as pig tail). He opposed gambling and opium activities, including the opium trade. Dr Wu Lien Teh founded and served as President of the Anti-Opium Association in Penang. In his private medical practice, Dr Wu Lien Teh had possessed an ounce of opium tincture for treating his patients. However, when this opium tincture was discovered in Dr Wu Lien Teh's possession, he was charged and found wrong (guilty) which was untrue. His trial attracted worldwide publicity, including the Chinese Government.

He was invited by the Grand Councillor Yuan Shih-kai in Peking to take up the post of Deputy Director of the Imperial Army Medical College in Tientsin (Tianjin) in 1907.

[In 1910, Dr Sun Yat Sen led the revolution of 1910-1911 in China.]

In the severe winter of 1910, Dr Wu Lien Teh (aged 31) was requested by the Foreign Office in Peking to investigate why many patients died in Harbin, Manchuria. They had died of pneumonic plague. This pneumonic plague pandemic killed more than 60,000 victims in Manchuria and Mongolia. Dr Wu Lien Teh worked on the plaque problem in Mongolia and north China, requesting isolation of infected victims, compulsory usage of face masks, and the corpses to be cremated. The area covered 2,000 miles from north-western Siberian border to Peking. Cremation of plague corpses reduced the spread of plague till it was brought under control in 4 months. This was the first instance Chinese corpses were cremated and cremation continued to be a Chinese funeral tradition till today. His new scientific approach greatly prevented the killer disease from spreading.

It was a great success story and progress in Chinese medicine in China. Dr Wu Lien Teh received recognition as a plague fighter who helped saved thousands of lives in northeast China in the early
1910s following a plague outbreak. After the successful control of plague in Harbin, Manchuria and Mongolia, Dr Wu Lien Teh became world famous.

He chaired the International Plague Conference in Mukden (Shenyang) in April 1911. It was a historic event as many scientists from USA, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Netherlands, Russia, Mexico and China attended the conference.

Later in the same year, he presented a research paper on the plague at the International Congress of Medicine in London in August 1911. His paper was published in The Lancet in the same month (August 1911).

Dr Wu Lien Teh contributed significantly to the knowledge on plague and to humanitarian service for his community in China. He established the Manchurian Plague Prevention Service in 1912. With this foundation, he began to introduce major medical reforms, modernising China's medical services and medical education. During his 29 years of service in China (1908-1937), 20 modern hospitals, labs and research institutions were built, including the Peking Central Hospital. He was the first president of the China Medical Association (1916-1920). A medical reformer, he worked with the Russians during an epidemic in 1921. He was the director of the National Quarantine Service (1931-1937) in China.

He worked hard for the League of Nations and became a world authority on the plague.

The Japanese occupied China and the Nationalists retreated. Dr Wu Lien Teh's villa in Shanghai, China was bombed by the Japanese in 1937. Dr Wu Lien Teh left China and returned to the Malay peninsula.

After having worked in China for 30 years, Dr Wu Lien Teh eventually returned to Malaya in 1937. He worked as a General Practitioner (GP) at 12 Brewster Road, Ipoh (now Jalan Sultan Idris Shah). He provided free consultation and treatment for the poor.

With money collected from the public, he helped started the Perak Library (now The Tun Razak Library) in Ipoh to encourage young people to read.

His portrait was taken in Cambridge in 1956 when he was 77. He continued to work as a GP for 22 years till 1959; he was 80 years old. He then retired from medical practice and returned to Penang. He lived in his new Penang retirement home for a week before he died. He died from a stroke on 21 January 1960, aged 81.

Dr Wu Lien Teh was the first person to modernize China's medical services and medical education.
He is remembered for his contributions in promoting China's public health, preventive medicine and medical education. Bronze statues of him appear in departments and hospital buildings in Harbin Medical University and in Beijing. A museum is dedicated to him and contains his bronze bust. A road was named Jalan Wu Lien-Teh after him in Ipoh Garden South, Ipoh. A private housing named Taman Wu Lien Teh near the Penang Free School was named after him.

Until today, Dr Wu Lien Teh's accomplishment is still recognised at the Penang Free School which named one of its school houses after him, and bearing the green colour.

An International Symposium on him was held in Harbin, China on 18-20 January 2013. The symposium was organised by The First Hospital of Harbin Medical University in Heilongjiang, China with the third Boreal Congress of Cardiology. It was attended by delegations from Malaysia, Singapore, members of the Penang State Government, and investPenang, Penang Global Tourism, Penang Medical College, and members of the newly formed Dr Wu Lien-Teh Society, Penang. An 18-member delegation led by Datuk Dr Lee Kah Choon, headed to China to attend the commemorative symposium on the legendary plague fighter Dr Wu Lien-Teh who was born in Penang. Participants were from various organisations, medical professionals, private individuals and members of the Old Frees' Association.

A conference, 'Remember Dr Wu Lien Teh' was held at the Conference Room, Ipoh Specialiist Hospital (5th Floor) on Friday, 22 March 2013 at 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm.

A book authored by Dr Wu Yu-Lin contains 200 photos of his work on the plague and services rendered in China from 1908 to 1937.

His autobiography is entitled Plague Fighter: The Autobiography of a Modern Chinese Physician (Heffner, Cambridge, 1959).

Datuk Dr Anwar Fazal is the president of the Dr Wu Lien-Teh Society of Penang. The Society has proposed Penang as the next venue for the Dr Wu Lien-Teh and Global Health Symposium in 2014.

Dr Wu Lien Teh was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1935. However, he did not win a Nobel Prize for the plague that he had battled in Manchuria and Mongolia.

His biography was presented at the Penang Story Lectures on 19 May 2012. Ong Lay Hong presented on "Plague Fighter Dr Wu Lieh-teh. A Penang Hero who modernized medicine in China". Ong Lay Hong is the Managing Director of Singapore Media Academiy, A MediaCorp Enterprise.


References

Quah Seng-Sun. 2012. Anything Goes blogspot. Accessed 6 Sept 2013.
http://ssquah.blogspot.com/2012/05/penang-free-schools-original-crest.html

Dr Wu Yu-Lin. 2013. Memories of Dr Wu Lien-Teh, Plague Fighter. Accessed 6 Sept 2013.
http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/2773

Ipoh News. 2013. Perak Lecture "Remember Dr. Wu Lien Teh". Accessed 6 Sept 2013.
http://ipohnews.com/2013/03/perak-lecture-remember-dr-wu-lien-teh/

Rightways Technologies. 2013. Remembering a plague fighter from Penang, Dr Wu Lien-Teh. Accessed 6 Sept 2013.
http://rightwaysrichard.blogspot.com/2013/01/remembering-plague-fighter-from-penang.html

Plague, Cholera and the Hajj 1865-1926

http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=history_theses

Empire of the Hajj: Pilgrims, Plagues, and Pan-Islam under British Surveillance,1865-1926
Michael Christopher Low
chrislow@earthlink.net
Georgia State University
Digital Archive @ GSU
Dept of History
16 July 2007

Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/history_theses

Recommended Citation
Low, Michael Christopher, "Empire of the Hajj: Pilgrims, Plagues, and Pan-Islam under British Surveillance,1865-1926" (2007).
History Theses. Paper 22.


Contents:

CHAPTER TWO
THE CRISIS OF CHOLERA 38
“A Woeful Crescendo of Death” 38
Edwin Chadwick and the Foundations of British Attitudes Toward Cholera 44
Science versus the Science of Denial 48
International Sanitary Conferences and the Quarantine Controversy 54
The Thomas Cook Hajj: Reforming the “Sanitary Pariah of the East” 65
Pauper Pilgrims, the Suez Canal, and the Civilizational Boundaries of Travel 71

CHAPTER FOUR
TOWARD A NEW ERA OF SANITARY INTERVENTIONISM 105
Cholera’s Grande Finale 106
The Bombay Plague of 1896: The Defeat of British Sanitary Obstructionism 113

EPILOGUE
LEGACIES OF THE COLONIAL HAJJ 161
The Hashimite Interregnum 161
The Wahhabi Conquest of the Hajj 166

ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1. The Ka'ba and the Masjid al-Haram, Mecca, 1885 2
Figure 2. Major Pilgrimage Routes in the Nineteenth Century 4
Figure 3. "Actual and Supposed Routes of Cholera from Hindoostan to Europe" 5
Figure 4. The Western Indian Ocean Basin, c. 1935 34
Figure 5. An Early Sketch Map of the Kamarān Island Quarantine Station, 1892 61
Figure 6. Tihāma-style Hut, Kamarān Island 63
Figure 7. Sultan Abdul Hamid II, c. 1890 89
Figure 8. Early Twentieth-Century Pilgrims at Jidda's Harbor 103
Figure 9. Dastūr al-‘Amal, Anjuman-i Khuddām-i Ka‘ba, 1913 139

INTRODUCTION
The first House established for the people was that at Bakka [Mecca], a place holy, and a guidance to all beings. Therein are clear signs—the station of Abraham, and whosoever enters it is in security. It is the duty of all men towards God to come to the House a pilgrim, if he is able to make his way there.
-Qur’an, 3:96-97

And proclaim to humanity the Pilgrimage, and they shall come unto thee on foot and upon every lean camel. They shall come from every remote place that they may witness things profitable to them.
-Qur’an, 22: 27-28*

*All translations from the Qur’an have been taken from A.J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1955; repr. ed., New York: Touchstone, 1996).

Terminologies and things of general interest:
haramayn (sacred areas) of Mecca and its nearby sister city, Medina.
dar al-Islam (the Islamic world)
The Suez Canal was opened in 1869 [see page 3 footnote 3 for travel routes before 1869]
the ‘ulama’ (religious elites and scholars)

the introduction of steamship of “modern” hajj
the steamship-era hajj

C.A. Bayly,

The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 (Malden, M.A. and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 354;

William R. Roff, “Sanitation and Security: The Imperial Powers and the Nineteenth Century Hajj” in Arabian Studies

VI (London: Scorpion Comm. and the Middle East Centre, University of Cambridge, 1982), 143.

influx of India’s destitute pilgrim masses and the globalization of epidemic disease

British Indian pilgrims were a “dangerous class” of “pauper pilgrims.”

David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 186-189.

... see Foreign Office (hereafter F.O.) 78/4094 in “British efforts to improve travel conditions for pilgrims; appointment of travel agent; problem of indigent pilgrims,” Oct. 1884-Feb. 1887, Alan de L. Rush, ed., Records of the Hajj: A Documentary History of the Pilgrimage to Mecca, vol. 3 (London: Archive Editions, 1993), 593-626.

A virulent epidemic of cholera broke out in the Hijaz in 1865, killing an estimated 15,000 pilgrims.

Robert Koch discovered the bacillus vibrio cholera in 1884.

University of Hong Kong, Medical Faculty - History & Milestones

The University of Hong Kong (UHK) Medical Faculty was the first tertiary learning centre on Hong Kong island. It was initially set up in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese by the London Missionary Society. It was renamed Hong Kong College of Medicine in 1907. An early philanthropist for its early building was an Indian named Moddy. The medical college was located close to Taipingshan, a residential area. Taipingshan soon attracted the Chinese populace and became densely populated to the point that it led to the outbreak of plague. Plague was thus the topic of study and research at the medical college, which also had a good animal house and stables for sound scientific research. 

To date, the medical college has dealt with some of the most difficult diseases and outbreaks in Hong Kong, including SARS and H1N1.

There are many interesting things to read about UHK medical history. A look through its pages to learn of its milestones is worth the effort. The move to create a medical museum and historical society are the envy of many medical schools today.

UHK also has a useful publication (see below) about its history that mentions Dr Mustapha bin Osman, an early Malay doctor from Kedah.

"Growing with Hong Kong: HKU and its Graduates - The First 90 Years"
http://www.hku.hk/impact/ 

Hong Kong University Press, 2002 - 352 pages

Other UHK Links:
http://www.hku.hk/about/u_glance.html
http://www.hku.hk/facmed/01us_history.htm
http://www.hku.hk/facmed/alumni/ul.html
http://designyoutrust.com/2016/02/hong-kong-in-the-1950s-captured-by-a-teenager/