History of Chinese Medicine: Being a Chronicle of Medical Happenings in China from Ancient Times to Present Period.

WONG, K. Chimin and Wu Lien-Teh.

$5,500.00

Item Number: 145581

Tientsin, China: The Tientsin Press, Ltd, 1932.

First edition of this extensive history of Chinese medicine. Thick octavo, original publisher’s blue cloth with gilt titles to the spine and front panel, frontispiece of Founder of the Republic Dr. Sun Yat-Sen in his Chungsan suit, generously illustrated with 92 photographs, diagrams, and drawings, plate with photographs of the Director of the Chinese Educational Mission Dr. T. Philip Sze and Honorable Senator H. C. Lodge laid in, rear pastedown pocket containing a folding map of China printed in color, two printed promotional pieces for the book, and a notice of the upcoming second edition with international order form tipped in. Signed by the two physician authors on a paper label tipped in to the half-title page. In very good condition with light rubbing to the extremities and light toning to the front and rear free endpaper, gift inscription to the margin of the autograph label. Rare and desirable signed.

Dr. Wu Lien-Teh was awarded the Queen's Scholarship in 1896, which enabled him to attend Emmanuel College, Cambridge as the first student of Chinese heritage ever to do so. As an epidemiologist, he was sent to study the deadly plague outbreak that began in Harbin, China in the winter of 1910. Once there, he took a number of measures that will appear very familiar to those of us who lived through COVID-19 outbreak. He suggested quarantines, disinfected buildings that had housed the sick, and in at least one case ordered an infected plague hospital burned to the ground. Dr. Wu also understood that the corpses of plague victims carried disease, and as the ground was frozen solid, making burial impossible, he asked for an imperial sanction to allow cremation of the remains. His design for the Wu mask was the forerunner of today's N95 respirator, the elastomeric filter with at least 95% filtration. With his measures in place, rates of infection began to decline immediately, and in less than a year, the outbreak was over, but not before claiming more than 60,000 lives. Dr. Wu continued his work on plague research, and was also nominated in 1935 for the Nobel Prize in Medicine 1935.