Dr Wu Lien Teh (1879-1960)

During the early days of the 20th century, medicine was not the precise science as we know it today. Many disciplines such as biochemistry, surgery and virology were still in their infancy. Death rates were high and infectious diseases rampant. In this trying time one Malaysian physician stood up against the murderous plague outbreak in Manchuria, China. The man was Dr. Wu Lien Teh.

Dr. Wu was born on the 10th of March 1879, the fourth son in a family of 11 children. He had spent his childhood in Georgetown and studied at Penang Free School.

Dr. Wu was a Queen's Scholar, after finishing first in the qualifying examinations of 1896. He set off on the 7th of August the same year for Cambridge, England. He graduated B.A., M.A., M.B., B. Chir and M.D. in 1905.

Upon graduation, Dr. Wu returned to the new Institude of Medical Research in KL as the first local doctor/research officer to work there. He subsequently returned to Penang to practice medicine. He also participated in the anti-opium movement, where he served as president.

Dr. Wu left for China in 1907 to take up the position of Vice-Director of the Imperial Medical College in Tientsin. In the severe winter of 1910, he was sent to combat the terrifying pneumonic plague, which then threatened the world and exacted a toll of 60,000 lives .

Here he introduced the unprecedented use of medical autopsies to establish a definite diagnosis of pneumonic plague. For this he needed to petition the Emperor to give Imperial Consent.
To control the spread of this highly contagious disease, Dr Wu was forced to introduce mass cremations as the Manchurian winter was so harsh that the ground was frozen solid, hence making it impossible to bury the dead rapidly.

Again he needed to petition the Emperor for an Imperial directive to allow this act which was resisted by the local populace as it was unheard off in Chinese culture.

The successful ending of this major plague epidemic brought him international fame and marked the beginning of almost thirty years of devoted humanitarian service to China.

In 1912, Dr Wu established the Manchurian Plague Prevention Service and served as its first Director. Dr. Wu played an important role in the modernization of China's medical service and education. He built fourteen modern hospitals, laboratories and research institutions including the Beijing Central Hospital. Apart from that, Dr. Wu also founded the Chinese Medical Association and established the first national quarantine service in China in 1930.

He organised international meetings on Plague and wrote extensively on it, and was recognised as the foremost authority on this dreaded disease in his generation. He was also an authority on the History of Chinese Medicine.

Following the invasion of the Japanese into China, Dr. Wu returned to Malaya in 1938, where he practised as a family physician in Ipoh until he passed away in 1960. Dr. Wu Lien Teh, one of the most illustrious medical sons of Malaysia, was the plague fighter who saved countless lives from being devastated by Plague. It is humbling for us to recall that 6 million people died in the middle ages from "Black Death" in Europe, caused by this same disease!