steadyaku47 : Why did I not know this? Why have I never even heard of his name until I came across this at Wikipedia through Kassim SA's FB who in turn was sharing it having seen it on Kamal Solhaimi Fadzil's FB...who asked "Why aren't we taught of Malaysians like him in our history?"
Wu Lien-teh
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dr. Wu Lien-teh portrait.
This is a Chinese name; the family name is Wu.
Dr. Wu Lien-teh (伍連德, Wu
Liande, Gnoh Lean Tuck, Ng Leen-tuck, 1879 – 21 January 1960) was a
Malayan-born Chinese doctor and the first medical student of Chinese
descent to study at University of Cambridge[1] He was also the first Malayan nominated to receive a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1935.[2]
Biography
He was born in Penang,
one of the three towns of the Straits Settlements (the others being
Malacca and Singapore). The Straits Settlements formed part of the
colonies of Great Britain. His father was a new immigrant from Taishan, China.
His mother's family also originated from China but she was a second
generation resident of Malaya. Dr Wu had four brothers and six sisters.
His early education was at the Penang Free School.
He was admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1896,[3]
after winning the Queen's Scholarship held in Singapore. He had a
successful career at university, and won virtually all the available
prizes and scholarships. His undergraduate clinical years were spent at St Mary's Hospital, London.
In 1903, Dr Wu returned to the Straits Settlement after finishing his
medical studies. However, there was no specialist post for him. This is
because, at that time, there was a two-tier medical system in the
British colonies, where only British nationals could hold the highest
position of fully qualified medical officers or specialists. So, Dr Wu
spent the first 4 years of his medical career researching beri-beri and then, he was in private practice.
He was very vocal in the social issues of the time, and founded the Anti-Opium Association in Penang.[4] This attracted the attention of the powerful forces involved in the lucrative trade of opium.
This led to a search and subsequent discovery of a mere one ounce of
tincture of opium in Dr Wu's dispensary, which was considered illegal,
although he was a fully qualified medical doctor who had purchased this
to treat opium patients. His prosecution and appeal rejection attracted
worldwide publicity, including an invitation from the then Grand
Councillor Yuan Shikai of the Chinese Government in Peking to take the post of Vice-Director of the Imperial Army medical College in Tientsin (Tianjin).
In the winter of 1910, Dr. Wu Lien-teh was given instructions from the Foreign Office, Peking, to travel to Harbin to investigate an unknown disease which killed 99.9% of its victims. This turned out to be the beginning of the large pneumonic plague
pandemic of Manchuria and Mongolia which ultimately claimed 60,000
victims. Dr Wu would be remembered for his role in asking for imperial
sanction to cremate plague victims, as cremation of these infected
victims turned out to be the turning point of the epidemic. The
suppression of this plague pandemic changed medical progress in China.
Dr Wu chaired the International Plague Conference in Mukden (Shenyang)
in April 1911, a historic event attended by scientists from the United
States of America, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy,
Austria-Hungary, Netherlands, Russia, Mexico and China. He 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. Dr Wu was the first president of the China Medical
Association (1916–1920) and directed the National Quarantine Service
(1931–1937).
In 1929, he was appointed a trustee of the 'Nanyang Club' in Penang by Cheah Cheang Lim along with Mr. Wu Lai Hsi, Dr. Robert Lim Kho Seng and Dr. Lim Chong Eang. The 'Nanyang Club' is an old house in Peiping, China and its aim was to provide convenient accommodation to their overseas Chinese friends.[4]
In 1937, with the Japanese occupation of much of China and the
retreat of the Nationalists, Dr Wu moved back to Malaya where he worked
as a General Practitioner in Ipoh.
To encourage the young to share his love for reading, Dr Wu tirelessly
collected donations to start the Perak Library (now The Tun Razak
Library) in Ipoh, a free lending public library. In his own medical
practice at 12 Brewster Road (now Jalan Sultan Idris Shah), long queues
were a common sight, and he was known as the doctor who gave free
consultation and treatment to the poor. He practised medicine until the
age of 80, when he bought a new house in Penang for his retirement.He
died on 21 January 1960, aged 81.
A road named after Dr Wu can be found in Ipoh Garden South, a
middle-class residential area in Ipoh located between Hock Lee Park and
Ipoh Garden East. In Penang, a private road named Taman Wu Lien Teh is
located near the Penang Free School.
Dr. Wu Lien-teh is regarded as the first person to modernize China's medical services and medical education. In Harbin Medical University,
bronze statues of Dr. Wu Lien-teh are built to remember his
contributions in promoting public health, preventive medicine and
medical education.[5] In Malaysia, a quiet place opposite of Penang Free School was named after him as Taman Wu Lien Teh
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