KUALA LUMPUR: IF you launch Google today, you'll see a Doodle that celebrates the 142nd birthday of Chinese-Malaysian epidemiologist Dr Wu Lien-teh, who invented a surgical face covering that is widely considered to be the precursor to the N95 mask.
Born into a family of Chinese immigrants in Penang, on this day in 1879, Dr Wu would become the first student of Chinese descent to earn his MD from Cambridge University. Following his doctoral studies, he accepted a position as the vice director for China's Imperial Army Medical College in 1908. When an unknown epidemic afflicted north-western China in 1910, the Chinese government appointed Dr Wu to investigate the disease, which he identified as the highly contagious pneumonic plague that spread from human to human through respiratory transmission.
The special mask
To combat the disease, Dr Wu designed and produced a special surgical mask with cotton and gauze, adding several layers of cloth to filter inhalations. He advised people to wear his newly invented mask and worked with government officials to establish quarantine stations and hospitals, restrict travel, and apply progressive sterilisation techniques; his leadership contributed greatly to the end of the pandemic (known as the Manchurian plague) by April 1911 - within four months of being tasked with controlling its spread.
In 1915, Dr Wu founded the Chinese Medical Association, the country's largest and oldest non-governmental medical organisation. In 1935, he was the first Malaysian - and the first person of Chinese descent - nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work to control the pneumonic plague. A devoted advocate and practitioner of medical advancement, Dr Wu's efforts not only changed public health in China but that of the entire world.
The legacy
Dr Wu's great-granddaughter, Dr Shan Woo Liu, M.D., shares her thoughts on the Doodle and her great-grandfather's legacy.
"We are honored that Google is celebrating our great-grandfather's birthday. Just over a century ago, he helped fight off a plague in China and developed techniques such as mask-wearing, that we still use today in our battle against Covid-19. Growing up, we heard our father's stories about our great-grandfather - that he was famous for controlling the Manchurian pneumonic plague, a disease that was deadly for nearly everyone who contracted it, and that he held a position in China equivalent to Surgeon General in the US A book on our coffee table with a tattered cover, Plague Fighter, reminded us daily of his achievements," said Liu.
"His story stirred something in me, and from an early age, I dreamed of becoming a doctor. Yet it wasn't until 1995, when I attended the 80th anniversary celebration of his founding of the Chinese Medical Association, that I truly appreciated his legacy. Hundreds of doctors and scientists crowded a Shanghai conference room to hear lectures about his life and career. I learned that he was considered by many to be the father of modern medicine in China. In 2018, I travelled with my family to Harbin, in Northeast China, to visit a museum and research institute built in my great grandfather's honor. It was humbling to walk in his footsteps in the very same city where he suppressed the plague outbreak a century earlier. Today, as an emergency physician treating Covid-19 patients, I appreciate his bravery all the more.
"A year ago, I was terrified by how little we knew about the coronavirus. Even now, I struggle to imagine how my great-grandfather must have felt as he cared for patients who had contracted the plague. But I also feel closer to him than ever as I urge my patients to practice social distancing and to wear a mask - the very techniques he pioneered as he rescued China, and possibly the world, from a scourge. Wu Lien-teh remains as much of a hero now as he was then," she said.
"As we appreciate his contribution to health care, at a time no more relevant than now, we say Happy birthday to the man behind the mask, Dr. Wu Lien-teh," she added.