1958 10 1 On the National Day, 76-year-old famous medical educator Yan Fuqing also served as the vice president of Shanghai Medical College. That day, he got a sad news that his beloved student Tang committed suicide at home the day before, that is,1September 30, 958. Yan Fuqing couldn't help crying on his back when he got the news.
Tang is one of Yan Fuqing's favorite students, and his life trend is closely related to Yan Fuqing's several phone calls.
And his early death, in a sense, also made China scientists miss an opportunity to climb the top of the Nobel Prize.
I met Yan Fuqing and embarked on the road of medicine.
1In July, 897, there was a drought in Tangjiaping, Liling, Hunan Province, and the people were poor. That year, Tang was born. 19 12, 15 years old Tang was admitted to Hunan Gold Engineering School. Out of curiosity, he often goes to Pingxiang coal mine nearby. One day, he saw two strangers carrying a strange wooden box Out of curiosity, he summoned up the courage to bow to them and asked what was in the box. Someone told him that this was a microscope, and they came to check hookworm for workers. He also patiently taught Tang how to observe slices and look for eggs with a microscope. One of them was Yan Fuqing, the first president of Xiangya Medical College, which was later established. Under his infection, Tang decided to give up his job and study medicine, not only to treat diseases, but also to study the causes.
19 14 years, after Tang dropped out of the technical school, he was successfully admitted to Xiangya Medical College and became a graduate of Xiangya Huangpu Phase I with excellent results.
At that time, world medicine had entered the golden age of microbiology. A generation of bacteriology and infectious disease experts, represented by famous French chemists and microbiologists Pasteur and Koho, have successively discovered the pathogens of most important infectious diseases. Koho's students are Japanese Kitasato Shibasaburo. He is called an Oriental because he discovered the pathogens of plague and tetanus. Tang Zeng, a young man, said, "If Japanese can go out of Koho in the East, why can't China go out of Pasteur in the East?"
After graduating from Xiangya Medical College, Tang decided to study bacteriology and infectious diseases. He applied to the Department of Bacteriology of Union Medical College for further study. After three years in Union Medical College, Tang mastered the theory and experimental technology of bacteriology. He was recommended by the school and won a scholarship from Harvard Medical School. He went across the ocean with great fighting spirit.
After receiving a personal letter from Yan Fuqing, he resolutely returned to China.
In the study and scientific research of Harvard University, Tang performed very well. Three years later, Tang's tutor strongly urged him to stay in Harvard, a world-famous school, with a superior living environment and scientific research environment. Don was moved. At this time, a letter from teacher Yan Fuqing made Tang change his mind.
Yan Fuqing graduated from Yale Medical College. When Tang attended Xiangya Medical College, Yan Fuqing was the dean. Later, he became the vice president of Union Medical College. At that time, several better medical schools in China were founded by foreigners, and Yan Fuqing was determined to establish China's own medical education system. With the approval of Nanjing Municipal Government, Central University Medical College was established in Shanghai in September. 1927. The following year, Yan Fuqing resigned from Union Medical College Hospital and became the full-time dean of Central University School of Medicine. Although the medical college has been established, there is a shortage of funds and teachers. There were only eight teachers. Yan Fuqing remembered Tang, a student studying in the United States, and asked him to come back and start a business together. In his letter to students, Yan Fuqing truthfully listed China's difficulties in running his own medical school and his ardent hope for students.
1in the spring of 929, Tang refused to be retained by Americans and returned to Shanghai with his wife as an associate professor in the Department of Bacteriology, School of Medicine, Central University.
After returning to China, Tang believed that the focus of the Department of Bacteriology for medical students was practice. As soon as he arrived in Shanghai, he set out to set up a laboratory, began to use extremely simple equipment for scientific research after teaching, and published papers one after another from 65438 to 0930. Since then, China has his own virology.
1932, the Medical College of Central University was renamed as the National Shanghai Medical College, and Professor Tang was appointed as the head of the Department of Bacteriology at the Reed Institute in Shanghai, England, where complex experiments could be carried out with complete equipment.
In the bonfire in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, Yan Fuqing was called to lead the Central Epidemic Prevention Department.
19 17 Plague occurred in Suiyuan, China, which affected Shanxi and Hebei provinces and killed more than 30,000 people. The Beiyang government hired Dr. Lian Dewu who successfully put out the plague epidemic in three northeastern provinces in 19 10. 19 18 years after the epidemic was extinguished, the Beiyang government asked Lian Dewu to set up a "national" and "permanent" epidemic prevention agency-the Central Epidemic Prevention Office, and appointed him as the preparatory director. 19 19 the central epidemic prevention station was formally established in the temple of heaven, and its function is to prepare serum and vaccines and guide the national epidemic prevention work.
In the year of its establishment, a plague epidemic occurred in Harbin, and the central epidemic prevention department appointed Jin Baoshan, who came back from Japan, to go to the front. With the help of Lian Dewu, the epidemic was quickly put out and the first world war was a success. ..
1938165438+10 In October, when the national disaster struck, the National Government moved to Wuhan, and the Central Epidemic Prevention Department also moved to Changsha according to the order. However, Chen Zongxian, then Minister of the Central Epidemic Prevention Department, suddenly proposed to go abroad for inspection.
At this time, President Yan Fuqing, who was organizing the relocation of Shanghai Medical College, was temporarily appointed as the director of health by the fugitive national government. When he learned that the Central Epidemic Prevention Department founded by his good brother Lian Dewu was leaderless, he thought of his disciple Tang. At this time, Tang was participating in the frontline rescue work of the "August 13th" Sino-Japanese War in Shanghai. Tang not only mobilized his wife to participate in the logistics support of the Red Cross, but also signed up for the front-line medical rescue team of the Shanghai Rescue Committee and entered Baoshan with the medical team. Under his repeated urging, he was assigned to the first-line ambulance station to save people.
For three months, until the fall of Shanghai, he only went home twice. So I missed the opportunity to go south with the big army. After that, I can only temporarily return to the concession and come to work in the once part-time office of Redstone.
After receiving Yan Fuqing's letter, Tang immediately set out with his family, broke through the blockade and arrived in Changsha to work as a spy.
Under the most difficult circumstances, Tang led the researchers to produce the best quality penicillin in China at that time. On September 5th, 1944, penicillin developed by China was born in Gao Feng village, Kunming. The first batch only produced 5 bottles, each containing 5,000 sets, of which 2 bottles were sent to Chongqing and 2 bottles were sent to Britain and the United States for identification, which was well received and then put into mass production.
As the only epidemic prevention institution in China, the central epidemic prevention station at that time also had a secret mission: to deal with the germ warfare of Japanese invaders. At that time, Tang led a small group of epidemic prevention pioneers and defeated the Japanese aggressors' plots again and again.
Later, Tang presided over the establishment of the earliest antibiotic production institution in China, the first experimental animal farm in China and the first biological product testing institution in China, and led the development of China's own rabies vaccine, diphtheria vaccine, vaccinia vaccine and the world's first typhoid vaccine.
During the War of Liberation, he led relevant personnel to produce 654.38+10,000 vaccinia vaccines to support the liberated areas. He and his colleagues also successfully curbed the spread of plague in Zhangjiakou in 1949.
At that time, the conditions in the epidemic prevention department were very difficult. There is no running water, only an old and leaky boiler, which needs to be repaired every day. Used agar should be recycled, and the recycling equipment is a broken wooden boat and placed in the lake for dialysis; There is no commercial peptone supply, they make it entirely by themselves. When the stomach enzyme is used up, use the stomach of your own pig.
Sir Joseph Needham, a famous British biologist in modern times and an "old friend of China people", commented on Tang: Tang is a "friend of mankind" in the English proverb of19th century and a "tenacious soldier in the field of preventive medicine".
Give up the opportunity to go back to Harvard and resolutely stay and build a new China.
During 1948, the war of liberation was still going on. At this time, Harvard University called and invited Don to join us. For his dream of scientific research, Tang decided to accept the employment of Harvard and move his family to the United States.
1April, 949, Tang's heavy luggage was transported to Hongkong, ready to fly to new york. But at the last minute, he suddenly changed his mind. He's from China, and he wants to stay! He wants to contribute to the construction of new China.
1950 the former central epidemic prevention department was renamed as the Institute of Biological Products of the Central Ministry of Health, and its director was Tang. At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the most urgent task of the health department was to control the epidemic situation of infectious diseases and ensure the supply of vaccines. Tang concentrated on organizing mass production and solving various technical problems. With the efforts of the whole hospital, the output of 195 1 increased by 7 times and that of 1949 increased by 3 times.
During 1950, a plague epidemic occurred in northern Chahar. Tang led a commando team to produce China's own live attenuated plague vaccine. He also undertook the research and development of yellow fever vaccine and made a live attenuated yellow fever vaccine in China.
After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), the Ministry of Health carried out vaccination work nationwide on the advice of experts such as Tang and others. After more than ten years' efforts, smallpox was completely eradicated in China in 196 1, leading the world in 16 years.
1957 Tang was elected as an academician of China Academy of Sciences.
Do your own experiments and find the pathogen of trachoma.
1982, Marshall, who only had a bachelor's degree at that time and was only a hospital resident, secretly decided to drink Helicobacter pylori culture solution and do experiments on himself in order to find strong evidence that Helicobacter pylori can directly cause gastritis and gastric ulcer without telling his family. In 2005, Marshall won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for proving the close relationship between Helicobacter pylori and stomach diseases.
The feat of doing experiments by yourself took place in China of 1956. This year, Tang discovered the first trachoma pathogen in the world.
Trachoma is a very serious epidemic in the middle and early 20th century. At that time, one in six people in the world suffered from trachoma. The incidence of trachoma in China is about 55%, and it is as high as 80% in rural areas. Since microbiology was founded, countless scientists have been looking for trachoma pathogens.
Hideki Noguchi, a Japanese scientist, once published a paper, claiming that he had discovered the pathogen of trachoma-Bacillus granulosus. But don expressed doubts.
If you can't prove that the pathogen you isolated can really cause trachoma, you can't confirm that it is the pathogen of trachoma. In other words, it is not accurate to do experiments only on animals. You must do experiments on people. But human experiments are extremely risky. Don couldn't bear to let any member of the laboratory take such a risk, so he decisively ordered his assistant to drop trachoma pathogen into his eyes. Soon, his eyes were swollen like walnuts and showed obvious clinical symptoms of trachoma. In the next 40 days, he insisted on not doing any treatment and collected a batch of very reliable clinical data. At this point, the debate on trachoma pathogens that lasted for nearly a hundred years finally came to an end.
Drugs for trachoma have developed rapidly, and the incidence of trachoma has dropped rapidly. 1959 the incidence of trachoma was as high as 84%, and decreased to 5.4% two years later.
1970, the pathogen of trachoma was officially named Chlamydia internationally, and Tang was the real father of Chlamydia.
1980, IOAT, an international ophthalmology organization, sent an invitation letter to the China Ophthalmology Society, which stated that IOAT would award Mr. Tang the Gold Medal of Trachoma, which is the highest honor in the international research field of trachoma prevention and treatment, and IOAT also intended to recommend Tang to win the Nobel Prize. But they couldn't find Tang's contact information, so they sent the invitation letter to the Ophthalmology Society, hoping to pass it on to Tang for him to attend the commendation meeting.
However, Tang, who died young, has been unable to go to the scene to receive the prize, and missed the opportunity to compete for the Nobel Prize, which makes people sigh.
1982165438+10. In October, China Academy of Sciences posthumously awarded the second prize of the Scientific and Technological Achievement Award of Tang Trachoma Virus Research.
1992165438+1October 22nd, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issued a commemorative stamp for Tang.
In 2003, when the SARS virus ravaged China, the medical community was at a loss. An old cadre of the Ministry of Health thought of Tang, so he let out a sigh: "If Tang is still there, why not!"
In fact, Tang, who was born in 1897, is already an old man of 106, even if he is still alive at this time. He was doomed to be unable to experience the first line, but there is no doubt that if he did not die young, the level of virology research in China could be further improved and more virologists could be trained. Of course, the time for China people to win the first Nobel Prize in Science may also be ahead of schedule.
But nothing can be assumed. I just hope the tragedy won't happen again.