The story of Wu-Lien-teh, the creator of the chinstrap

Two ideas were those which allowed the doctor Wu-Lien-tech revolutionize public health. One of them was design and manufacture a surgical mask special cotton and gauze, to which he added several layers of fabric to filter inhalations, a product that advised the entire population to wear to avoid contagion.

The other was to observe how action against the pandemic changed when the father of Chinese public health saw a cemetery with thousands of coffins and corpses, victims of the plague. There, he understood that the bodies piled up during the winter would serve as an incubator to put an end to this plague. It was so proposed to remove the remains without burial through, for subsequent mass cremation.

At the start of the 20th century, an unknown epidemic struck northwest China. The situation is devastating, the pneumonic plague of 1911 devastates the populations. In this context, the figure of the Malaysian doctor has emerged with measures that are used today to combat the coronavirus. This highly contagious disease whose spread is by respiratory transmission has been challenged with clear rules that we apply today in our daily life: quarantine, restrictions of movement and the making of a special mask with cotton, gauze and several layers of fabric, which constrains the population. use.

But also, He managed to trace the origin of the disease, and it emerged, among the groundhog hunters, who had been infected with the skins that hung in their homes. In just under a few months, he managed to bring the epidemic under control. Wu-Lien-teh became the first Chinese medical student at Cambridge University and the first of Asian descent to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1935. But his long and extensive career does not end there since in addition, he was president of the Chinese Medical Association between 1916-1920 and headed the national quarantine service between 1931-1937.

The pioneer of the cloth mask, which became the precursor of the N-95 mask, one of the most used, especially by medical personnel, during the COVID-19 pandemic, chaired the International Plague Conference in Mukden (Shenyang) , in April 1911., a historic meeting of scientists from the following countries: United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Netherlands, Russia, Mexico and China. There is a document: half of the doctors and nurses participating in the emergency room had died of a problem that no one had taken into account and it was Wu-Lien-tech who, during an autopsy on one of the deceased, found that the virus had spread through the air with a lethality of about 100%.

The renowned epidemiologist was trained in different countries, although his studies began in Penang, his hometown. He later completed his studies in the UK, Germany and Paris. Wu-Lien-teh has remained at the forefront of epidemic prevention in Harbin, China. He was the medical director of the North Manchuria Prevention Service, which later became the world’s largest plague research center. His perseverance paid off when he succeeded in eradicating the reappearance of the plague in 1921 and the malaria epidemic of 1919.

The great plague of Manchuria or pneumonic plague

The Tarbagan marmot was a species of rodent that lived mainly in the grasslands and steppe of Mongolia and neighboring Manchuria. European, American, and Japanese furriers had long purchased saber, mink, and otter furs from local hunters, but were never interested in the thick fur of the Tarbagan marmot.

Since 1910 until the start of the following year, over 60,000 people have died. Harbin was part of what was called Manchuria, an agricultural region located at the junction of China, Japan and Russia. The city was home to large communities of Japanese, Americans and Europeans. Thousands of local hunters have been commissioned by foreign buyers to bring in marmot skins. The disease probably arose from this trade. Cases of pneumonic plague have appeared in major railway terminals, from Beijing to Wuhan. By the early 1900s, Harbin had reached a death toll of over 5,000.

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