PENANG, MALAYSIA — A tropical island off the coast of Malaysia would seem an odd place for a monument to epidemiology in China. But at the base of Penang Hill, just around the corner from a major mosque and a KFC, is a road named after Dr. Wu Lien-teh, who in the winter of 1911-1912 helped stop an epidemic from spreading throughout China and possibly into the wider world.
Dr. Wu was born in Penang, he was the first medical student of Chinese descent to study at the University of Cambridge and was later nominated for a Nobel Prize in Medicine. In 1911, he traveled to the northeastern city of Harbin to investigate a deadly disease that had already killed hundreds of people along the rail lines of Manchuria. Dr. Wu diagnosed the disease as an outbreak of pneumonic plague and he recommended the Chinese government shut down the rail lines ahead of the Chinese New Year when many workers in Manchuria would head home to other parts of China. His actions prevented a local disaster from turning into a national catastrophe.
But it wasn’t easy. When Dr. Wu arrived in Harbin, his ideas were ignored, even mocked, by fellow physicians from Japan, Russia, and France, all of whom had been sent to discover the nature of the mystery ailment killing people along the railways of Manchuria.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, imperialist powers granted themselves exceptional rights to conquer and subjugate other parts of the world because they believed their civilizations were superior to those of their colonial subjects. This superiority was based on several assumptions, but one of the most common was science and health.