Author Spring and Autumn
On the National Day of October 1, 1958, Yan Fuqing, a famous medical educator, who was already 76 years old, was still holding the post of vice president of Shanghai Medical College. On that day, he got the sad news that his beloved student Tang Feifan had killed himself at home in the early hours of September 30, 1958, the day before. Yan Fuqing, who got the news, couldn't help but look up and cry.
Tang Feifan was one of Yan Fuqing's favorite students, and his life was closely related to Yan Fuqing's several calls.
And his untimely death has, in a sense, robbed Chinese scientists of a chance to reach the top of the Nobel Prize.
Meet Yan Fuqing, on the road to medicine
In July 1897, Hunan Liling Tangjiaping, the outbreak of drought, the people do not have enough to live, that year, Tang Feifan was born. 1912, 15-year-old Tang Feifan enrolled in the Hunan Province, A kind of industrial school of gold engineering to study. Out of curiosity, he often went to the nearby Pingxiang coal mine. One day he saw two strangers carrying a strange wooden box. Curious, he summoned up the courage to bow to the two men and asked what was in the box. The visitors told him it was a microscope and that they had come to examine the workers for hookworms. They also patiently taught Tang Feifan how to use the microscope to look at the sections and find the eggs. One of these two men was Yan Fuqing, the first president of Xiangya Medical College, which was later established. Under his influence, Tang Feifan was determined to give up work and study medicine, not only to treat diseases, but also to study the causes of diseases.
In 1914, after dropping out of the industrial school, Tang Feifan was admitted to Xiangya Medical College and became a graduate of Xiangya's "Whampoa I" program.
At that time, the world of medicine had entered the golden age of microbiology, and a generation of bacteriologists and epidemiologists, represented by the famous French chemist and microbiologist Pasteur and Kohl, discovered the causative organisms of most of the major infectious diseases one after another. Kouhou's student was the Japanese Shibasaburo Kitasato, who was known as Kouhou of the East for his discovery of the causative agent of bubonic plague and tetanus. The young and vigorous Tang Feifan once issued a bold statement: "Japan can produce the Oriental Kouhou, why can't China produce the Oriental Pasteur?"
After graduating from Xiangya Medical College, Tang Feifan was determined to study bacteriology and infectious diseases, and he applied for further study at the Department of Bacteriology of the Union Medical College. Three years in the Concord Medical College, Tang Feifan fully mastered the theory of bacteriology and experimental techniques, recommended by the school, he was awarded a scholarship to Harvard Medical School in the United States, he was full of ambition to go to the other side of the ocean.
After receiving a personal letter from Yan Fuqing, he returned to China
During his studies and research at Harvard University, Feifan Tong performed very well. After three years, his mentor strongly urged him to stay at Harvard, with the aura of a world-famous university, and a superior living environment and research environment. Tang Feifan's heart is moved, at this time, a letter from his teacher Yan Fuqing let Tang Feifan change his mind.
Yan Fuqing graduated from Yale School of Medicine. Yan was the dean of Xiangya Medical College when he was a student. He later became vice dean of the Union Medical College. The first time I saw this, I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night. With the approval of the Nanjing government, the Central University Medical College was established in September 1927 in Shanghai. In the following year, Yan resigned from his position at the Union Hospital and became the dean of the Central University Medical School. Although the medical school was established, there was a lack of funds and faculty, with only eight teachers at the time. Yan Fuqing remembered his student, Tang Feifan, who was in the United States, and asked him to come back and start his own business. In his letter to the students, Mr. Yan listed the difficulties of running a Chinese medical school and his high hopes for the students.
In the spring of 1929, Tang Feifan declined the American's offer to stay and returned to Shanghai with his wife as an associate professor in the Department of Bacteriology of the Medical College of the Central University.
After returning to China, Tong Feifan believes that the focus of the bacteriology of medical students in the internship, he arrived in Shanghai and immediately set up a laboratory, in the spare time to teach began to utilize the extremely simple equipment for scientific research, in 1930 began to publish papers one after another. From then on, China had its own virology.
In 1932, the medical school of the Central University was renamed the National Shanghai Medical College, and Tang Feifan was promoted to full professor, and at the same time was appointed head of the Department of Bacteriology of the British Rae Shields Institute in Shanghai, where he was able to utilize the institute's full range of equipment to conduct complex experiments.
In the midst of the War of Resistance, he accepted Yan Fuqing's call to lead the Central Epidemic Prevention Office
In 1917, the bubonic plague broke out in the Suiyuan region of China, spreading to the provinces of Jin and Hebei, and killing more than 30,000 people. The Beiyang government hired Dr. Wulind, who had successfully fought the 1910 plague epidemic in the eastern provinces, to take charge. In 1918, after fighting the epidemic, the Beiyang government asked Wu Liande to set up a "nationwide" and "permanent" anti-epidemic organization - the Central Anti-epidemic Office, modeling on the Northeast Anti-epidemic Office of that year, and appointed him as the head of the Central Anti-epidemic Office.
The year it was established, there was a plague epidemic in Harbin, and the Central Epidemic Prevention Office assigned Jin Baoshan, who had returned from his stay in Japan, to go to the front line. With the help of Wuliande, the epidemic was quickly extinguished, which can be described as a success.
In November 1938, at the time of the national tragedy, the national government has moved to Wuhan, the Central Epidemic Control Office also moved to Changsha under the order, but the then director of the Central Epidemic Control Office, Chen Zongxian, suddenly proposed that he wanted to go abroad to study.
At this time, President Yan Fuqing, who was on his way to organize the internal relocation of the Shanghai Medical College, was temporarily appointed by the fugitive national government as the Director of the Department of Health. When he learned that his brother Wu Liande founded the Central Epidemic Prevention Office, he was caught in a state of confusion, and he thought of his beloved disciple Tang Feifan. At this time, Tang Feifan was taking part in the front-line ambulance work of the "August 13th" Songhu War, Tang Feifan not only mobilized his wife to participate in the logistical support of the Red Cross, but also signed up to participate in the Shanghai Ambulance Committee's front-line medical ambulance team, stationed at Baoshan with the medical team. He was assigned to the first line of the ambulance station to save lives and help the wounded after many strong requests.
For 3 months, until the fall of Shanghai, he only went home twice. He missed the opportunity to move south with the army. After that, he could only return to the rented area temporarily, and came to work at the Lei's German Research Institute, where he used to work part-time.
Upon receiving Yan Fuqing's letter, Tang Feifan immediately set off with his family, broke through the blockade, and arrived in Changsha to work as an agent.
Under the most difficult environment, Tang Feifan led the researchers to produce the best quality Chinese penicillin. on September 5, 1944, China's self-developed penicillin was born in the village of Gao Village, Kunming. The first batch produced only 5 bottles, each bottle of 5000 units, of which two bottles were sent to Chongqing, two bottles were sent to the United Kingdom and the United States to appraise, were praised, and then put into production in large quantities.
As the only anti-epidemic organization in China, the then Central Epidemic Control Office also had a secret mission: to deal with Japanese germ warfare. At that time, Tang Feifan led a small group of pioneers in epidemic prevention, and thwarted the Japanese conspiracy again and again.
Afterwards, Tang Feifan led the creation of China's earliest antibiotic production organization, the first experimental animal breeding farm, China's first biologics testing organization, and led the research and development of China's own rabies vaccine, diphtheria vaccine, cowpox vaccine, and the world's first measles typhoid vaccine.
During the Liberation War, he led the staff to rush out 100,000 copies of cowpox vaccine to support the liberated areas. He and his colleagues also succeeded in containing the spread of plague in Zhangjiakou in 1949.
At that time, the conditions in the Epidemic Prevention Department were very difficult, there was no running water, there was only an old and leaky, and the boiler had to be repaired every day after use; used agar had to be recycled for use, and the recycling equipment was a broken wooden boat, which was put in a lake for dialysis; there was no supply of peptone for merchandise, and it was entirely made by themselves, and the gastric enzyme ran out, and then they used their own pig's stomachs.
British modern biologist, "the Chinese people's old friend" Sir Joseph Lee commented on Tang Feifan: Tang Feifan is the 19th century British proverb "friend of mankind", "a tenacious warrior in the field of preventive medicine". He is "a stalwart warrior in the field of preventive medicine."
Giving up the opportunity to return to Harvard, he decided to stay and build a new China
In 1948, when the war of liberation was still going on, Harvard University called to invite Fei-Fan to join the organization, and in order to fulfill his dream of scientific research, Fei-Fan decided to accept the appointment of Harvard and moved his family to the United States.
In 1948, Harvard University called and invited Fei-Fan to join the organization.
In April 1949, Tang Feifan's large luggage has been shipped to Hong Kong, ready to fly to New York. But just at the last moment before leaving, he suddenly changed his mind. He was a Chinese, and he was going to stay! He wants to contribute to the construction of the new China.
In 1950, the original Central Epidemic Control Office was renamed the Institute of Biological Products of the Ministry of Health of the Central Government, with Tang Feifan as its director. At the beginning of the founding of the country, the most urgent task of the health sector is to control the epidemic of infectious diseases and ensure the supply of vaccines. Tang Feifan concentrated on organizing large-scale production and solving various technical problems, under the efforts of the whole institute, the output in 1951 increased by 7 times compared to 1949, and in 1952, it increased by 13 times compared to the previous year.
In 1950, when plague was prevalent in the northern part of Chahar, Tang Feifan had led an assault team to rush out China's own live attenuated plague vaccine. He also undertook the development of a vaccine for yellow fever and produced China's own live attenuated yellow fever vaccine.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Ministry of Health, based on the recommendations of experts such as Tang Feifan, universalized pox planting throughout the country, and after more than a decade of efforts, smallpox was completely eradicated from China in 1961, leading the world by 16 years.
In 1957, Tang Feifan was elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Taking himself as an experiment to find the pathogen of trachoma
In 1982, Marshall, who had only a bachelor's degree at that time and was only a resident in the hospital, in order to find strong evidence that Helicobacter pylori can directly lead to gastritis and gastric ulcers, without informing his family, he secretly and resolutely drank Helicobacter pylori culture fluid, and experimented on his own body. In 2005, Marshall won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for proving the strong association between H. pylori and gastric diseases.
And the feat of experimenting on oneself happened in 1956 in China. That year, Tang Feifan discovered the world's first strain of the trachoma pathogen.
In the early mid-20th century, trachoma was a very serious epidemic. At that time, one-sixth of the world's population suffered from trachoma, and the incidence of trachoma in China was about 55%, with a high incidence of more than 80% in rural areas. Since the creation of microbiology, countless scientists have searched for the trachoma pathogen.
A Japanese scientist, Eishi Noguchi, published a paper claiming to have discovered the causative agent of trachoma, Mycobacterium granulosum. But Tang Feifan was skeptical.
If you can't prove that the pathogen you isolated can actually cause trachoma in humans, then you can't confirm that it's the causative agent of trachoma, which means that it's not accurate to experiment only on animals, but it has to be experimented on humans. But human experimentation is extremely risky. Tang Feifan could not bear to let any member of the lab take such a risk, so he resolutely ordered his assistant to drop the trachoma pathogen into his eyes. Soon, his eyes swelled up like walnuts and he developed obvious clinical symptoms of trachoma. Over the next 40 days, he insisted on no treatment and collected a batch of very reliable clinical data, at which point the debate over the pathogen of trachoma, which has lasted for nearly a century, finally came to an end.
Drugs to treat trachoma were quickly developed, and the incidence of trachoma declined rapidly. in 1959, the incidence of trachoma was as high as 84%, and two years later, it was down to 5.4%.
In 1970, the trachoma pathogen was officially named Chlamydia internationally, and Tang Feifan was truly the father of Chlamydia.
In 1980, IOAT, the International Organization for Ophthalmology Control, sent an invitation letter to the Chinese Society of Ophthalmology, which reads that IOAT, in order to express its recognition of Mr. Tang Feifan's great achievements in the research of the trachoma pathogen, will award him the Gold Medal for Trachoma, which is the world's highest honor in the field of trachoma prevention and treatment research, and that IOAT intends to recommend Mr. Tang Feifan to the Nobel Prize. Only they could not find Tang Feifan's contact information, so they sent the invitation letter to the Ophthalmology Society, hoping to forward it to Tang Feifan on behalf of him, so that he could participate in the commendation meeting.
The untimely death of Tang Feifan, who was no longer able to travel to the site to receive the award, and the missed opportunity to compete for the Nobel Prize, was a sad sight to behold.
In November 1982, the Chinese Academy of Sciences posthumously awarded Tang Feifan the Second Class Scientific and Technological Achievement Award for his research on trachoma virus.
On November 22, 1992, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issued a commemorative stamp for Tang Feifan.
In 2003, when the SARS virus was ravaging China, the medical community was at a loss, and a veteran cadre from the Ministry of Health remembered Tang Feifan, and let out a sigh of relief: "If Tang Feifan was still around, why would it be so bad!"
In fact, the 1897-born Tang Feifan was already 106 years old even if he was alive, and he was not destined to be on the front lines, but it is indisputable that if he had not died young, China's virology research could have been taken to a higher level, and more virological talent could have been trained. Of course, the time for the Chinese to win their first Nobel Prize in a scientific category would probably have been earlier as well.
But it's impossible to hypothesize, so let's hope the tragedy doesn't repeat itself.
But it's impossible to assume anything.