Case for wearing face masks (4): History -- showing how Wu Lien-Teh from Penang, in the face of racism and widespread doubt, soldiered on to make the face mask an icon of modern healthcare

‘In the fall of 1910, a plague broke out across Manchuria—what we know now as Northern China—which was broken up in politically complex jurisdictions shared between China and Russia...

‘The Chinese Imperial Court brought in a doctor named Lien-teh Wu to head its efforts. He was born in Penang and studied medicine at Cambridge. Wu was young, and he spoke lousy Mandarin. In a plague that quickly attracted international attention and doctors from around the world, he was “completely unimportant,” according to Lynteris. But after conducting an autopsy on one of the victims, Wu determined that the plague was not spread by fleas, as many suspected, but through the air.

‘Expanding upon the surgery masks he’d seen in the West, Wu developed a hardier mask from gauze and cotton, which wrapped securely around one’s face and added several layers of cloth to filter inhalations. His invention was a breakthrough, but some doctors still doubted its efficacy.

‘“There’s a famous incident. He’s confronted by a famous old hand in the region, a French doctor [Gérald Mesny] . . . and Wu explains to the French doctor his theory that plague is pneumonic and airborne,” Lynteris says. “And the French guy humiliates him . . . and in very racist terms says, ‘What can we expect from a Chinaman?’ And to prove this point, [Mesny] goes and attends the sick in a plague hospital without wearing Wu’s mask, and he dies in two days with plague.”

‘Other doctors in the region quickly developed their own masks. “Some are . . . completely strange things,” Lynteris says. “Hoods with glasses, like diving masks.”

‘But Wu’s mask won out because in empirical testing, it protected users from bacteria. According to Lynteris, it was also a great design. It could be constructed by hand out of materials that were cheap and in ready supply. Between January and February of 1911, mask production ramped up to unknown numbers. Medical staff wore them, soldiers wore them, and some everyday people wore them, too. Not only did that help thwart the spread of the plague; the masks became a symbol of modern medical science looking an epidemic right in the eye.’

Read here (Fast Company, March 24, 2020)

Past pandemics exposed China’s weaknesses: The current one highlights its strengths

‘...[The] audience for Xi’s performance is as much global as domestic. Just as in the past, whether in the time of SARS or of plague, outside observers are assessing China’s governance by its capacity to manage its health. COVID-19 has become an important test for the virtues of authoritarian governance versus those of citizen empowerment. Aware of this high-stakes diplomacy, China is reframing the narrative to emphasize the success of its mass-containment measures and downplay concerns about its initial failures. China has shared its expertise with the European Union, pledged $20 million to the WHO in its fight against the virus, dispatched medical teams and supplies to Iran, Iraq, Italy, and Serbia, and promised to help African countries meet the crisis. All at once, Xi has begun to look more like a global leader committed to health for all...

‘The new coronavirus has revealed a fractured geopolitical landscape and reactivated old arguments about openness and efficiency. The virus has laid bare China’s strongman leadership, but it has also highlighted incompetencies within Western democracies. As governments of democratic states impose sweeping quarantine measures, China is hoping that its draconian style of epidemic management will prevail as the new global norm.’

NOTE: There is a mention Wu Lien-Teh in this story. ‘In 1910, as Qing rule crumbled, the British-educated, Penang-born physician Wu Lien-teh was sent by the Chinese government to curtail the spread of pneumonic plague across Northeast China. He enacted stringent containment strategies based on modern scientific teachings: postmortems, bacteriological investigations, and mass cremations, to name a few. Wu’s program was markedly different from the response to the bubonic plague just two decades prior, when endeavors to halt the contagion were left to local charitable organizations or to the foreign officials who staffed the Imperial Maritime Customs Service with minimal oversight from the viceroy at Canton.’

Read here (Foreign Affairs, March 7, 2020)