WU, Lien-teh.

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Plague Fighter: The Autobiography of a Modern Chinese Physician. First edition, first printing, of this autobiography by the physician who first identified the benefits of wearing masks and self-isolating in pandemics. In 1935, he became the first Chinese doctor to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine, and his contributions to global epidemiology were celebrated in the Google Doodle for 10 March 2021.Having studied at Cambridge in the 1890s, Wu Lien-teh (1879-1960) returned to China in time to be on the front line of the fight against the 1910-11 plague epidemic in northeastern China. In the face of scepticism from foreign doctors, he argued that infectious disease could be spread by respiratory droplets and introduced the use of cotton and gauze masks, as well as self-isolation, to curtail the plague's spread. These strategies quickly became standard tools of public health management and were used to "flatten the curve" during the 1918 flu pandemic.Arranged thematically rather than chronologically, Plague Fighter recounts the many twists and turns of Wu's career. Opening with the 1910-11 epidemic, the 24 chapters discuss topics such as his childhood and education, his founding of the Chinese National Quarantine Service in 1930, the narcotics problem, and Wu's interactions with the different centres of power in post-imperial China. They provide a detailed history of modern Chinese medicine and society during a fast-moving, transformative period.

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