(old photos of the plague in 1910)
Han Fudong/text
Fujiadian is a low-lying town with 24,000 residents near Harbin. On December 25, 1910, when the 31-year-old physician Wu Liande and his assistant Lin Jiarui arrived here in a Russian carriage, statistics showed that the death toll in Fujiadian that day was 10.
A plague that causes lung disease is raging in the Northeast. Fujiadian is the center of this storm. In a report, Russian physician Boguchi recorded the time and place of the earliest clear discovery of plague cases, which was in Manzhouli, a city on the Sino-Russian border, on October 12, 1910. This is not really the earliest case. A month before this, plague had broken out among the Chinese working circles in the Urya region of Russia.
Along the railway, an advanced transportation artery at the time, the epidemic began to spread in China, which is adjacent to Russia. On October 27, the first case appeared in Harbin. Fujiadian, a small town close to the main railway line, quickly became the largest epidemic area because it received sick Chinese workers. In the small town of 24,000 people, almost a quarter died.
Wu Liande, a doctor who entered Fujiadian, took the lead in the second half of the plague prevention and control process. His ancestral home is Xinning, Guangdong (today's Taishan City). He was born in Penang, Malaysia in 1879. He received a doctorate in medicine from the University of Cambridge, England, in 1905. Before going to the epidemic area in Northeast China in 1910, he was the Assistant Director (Vice Principal) of the Tianjin Army Medical School. Recommended by the Right Prime Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Shi Zhaoji, he became the Plenipotentiary Chief Medical Officer for Plague Prevention in Harbin. It is precisely because of his participation that this massive epidemic prevention campaign has achieved subsequent results.
Wu Liande rushed to Fujiadian the next day after arriving in Harbin. Here, he made important decisions including: wearing masks, cremation, isolating patients and closing the city.
masks
Less than 20 days after Wu Liande arrived in Northeast China, on January 11, 1911, Menie, a French doctor who was working on the front line in the Fujiadian epidemic area, died of the plague due to infection, which became a sensational event. Chen Zhaochang, the governor of Jilin, wrote a letter asking the emperor to provide additional compensation.
Mei Nie is the chief professor of Beiyang Medical College. Before going to Northeast China, he participated in the prevention and control of bubonic plague in Tangshan in 1908. Before he died of illness, he had the opportunity to replace Wu Liande and take charge of the epidemic prevention affairs of the Northeastern Plague.
Wu Liande recalled in his autobiography that Menie was infected because he did not wear a mask when examining patients at the Russian Plague Hospital in Harbin New City on January 5, 1911. Three days later, he felt unwell, with mild chills, severe headache and fever, and was restless all night; he began to cough with sputum the next day.
After the Russian Plague Hospital admitted Menie, bacteriological examination clearly detected Yersinia pestis. Rescue efforts failed, and Mei Nie died of illness on January 11.
The sudden death of a leader in the medical community caused huge panic in the local area. Mei Nie did not wear a mask when visiting patients, which also shows how vague the concepts of droplet infection and isolation were at that time.
Masks began to be used in medical protection at the end of the 19th century. In 1897, the German Ledecky began to promote the method of "wrapping the mouth and nose with gauze to prevent bacterial invasion." Before Wu Liande went to Northeast China, Fujiadian already had two doctors from Beiyang Medical College. Masks are recommended but not given the attention they deserve. All doctors, assistants, busboys, sterilizers, and gravediggers here are required to wear masks, but people usually don't comply and just hang them around their necks.
Wu Liande also went to the Russian plague hospital where Menie was infected. Dr. Haffkin and his colleagues at the hospital were quite confident because they had been injected with the Haffkin plague vaccine developed by his uncle, and they did not wear masks when examining patients.
When Wu Liande entered the infectious disease ward with Haffkin, he was worried that he would be considered timid if he asked to wear a mask. This also shows that wearing a mask was indeed a new measure in the medical community at that time, and no broadly binding consensus had yet been formed. However, Wu Liande was luckier than Mei Nie. Although he stayed in the ward for ten minutes without wearing a mask and consulted the patient, he was not infected.
After Mei Nie died of the plague, masks began to be vigorously promoted in the epidemic areas of Northeast China.Previously, the masks worn by local medical staff were either ready-made thread-woven cloth pieces made of black gauze that just covered the mouth and nose; or a piece of surgical gauze lined with cotton to cover the lower part of the face. The newly promoted masks use white gauze wrapped with disinfectant cotton and can be tied behind the head.
Wu Liande said in his autobiography that this simple mask was "recommended by the Chinese Epidemic Prevention Organization", but now people generally call it "Wu's mask". The promotion of this kind of mask has been quite effective, from the medical community to ordinary people, so that almost everyone on Fujiadian Street wears it. However, not everyone understands that the real purpose of masks is to prevent droplets carrying germs from entering the respiratory tract. Some medical staff also spray Lysol or undiluted carbolic acid on the masks for disinfection, resulting in facial burns. Some people even use them as amulets, hanging around their necks to ward off evil spirits.
Wu Liande concluded afterwards that protective masks proved to be most useful when the plague epidemic was rampant.
Cremation
The Northeastern Plague first originated in September 1910. It was introduced by Chinese workers who returned from working in Russia. It centered on Heilongjiang and spread southward.
Check the reports of Chinese and foreign media at that time, and you can see the damage and panic caused by the early epidemic. For example, the English media "Zi Lin Bao" reported in early 1911 that not even one person infected with the plague survived this time, and the infection was extremely rapid. The epidemic spread endlessly in Northeast China, with 254 people dying in Harbin, 1,184 people dying in Fujiadian, and 38 people dying in Fengtian. "Countless people died" in Changchun and Jilin.
A second case of suspected plague infection was also found in Dalian Bay, which is at risk of death. However, who infected him has not yet been identified. After that, seven more infected people were quickly discovered, and local people were panicked.
The disposal of dead bodies has become a troublesome matter. On his first day in Fujiadian, Wu Liande noticed the corpses everywhere on the street. In order to avoid police investigation and the government's forced disinfection of the house, the patient's family chose to secretly throw away the dead body at night. The government then paid for the coffins, freight, and funeral expenses, collecting the bodies on the streets, placing them in cheap coffins made of thin, unpolished boards, and transporting them to public cemeteries for burial.
Later, due to the increasing number of corpses, the government decided to bury them directly without coffins. However, due to the cold weather and freezing conditions, it was difficult to dig the tomb, so the corpses and coffins were piled on the surface for a long time, stretching for nearly two kilometers.
Bodies piled up everywhere are not unique to Fujiadian. This problem also exists in other epidemic areas. "Zi Lin Bao" reported on February 16 from Hulan , Heilongjiang: burying dead bodies is the most important task in the future. Since the corpses and coffins are scattered everywhere, and most of the corpses have been bitten by dogs, the government has sent horses to patrol the area. The team patrolled and found the body, which was placed together with the recent coffin in Guanwang Temple, two miles away from the city.
reported that the local prefect’s attitude has changed significantly recently compared with before, and he expressed his eagerness to implement various epidemic prevention policies to the reporter of Zilin Daily. The prefect also personally monitors epidemic prevention matters every day and puts forward suggestions for improving the organization.
The final solution to the dead body is to be cremated. Zilin Daily reported from Hulan that residents had agreed to cremate the bodies of their relatives. 680 bodies were burned in the first time, 352 bodies were burned in the past week, and 330 bodies were buried. Nowadays, the law is followed everywhere, but it cannot be followed uniformly. The prefect personally carried kerosene to monitor and implement this matter.
The idea of centralized cremation was proposed by Wu Liande. He believed that the problem of secondary transmission of germs caused by corpses could not be solved without this. In the Northeast in 1911, burial and grave guarding were still public beliefs. In order to resolve the people's resistance, Wu Liande first won the support of local officials and gentry, and then petitioned the court and obtained the emperor's approval.
Because there were too many corpses, the cremation scene was extremely spectacular. According to Wu Liande's recollection, they hired 200 workers to collect the coffins and corpses and stack them in groups of 100, for a total of 22 piles. They poured barrels of kerosene on the pile of corpses and placed paraffin wax. To prevent accidents, multiple sets of mechanical water pumps and fire water pipes for fire extinguishing were installed on site.
After the collective cremation, the ground became soft, and Wu Liande called on workers to dig several large pits. From then on, the plague victims were cremated directly in the large pits.Cremation was promoted very rapidly in the Northeast, and some corpses of plague patients who had been buried before were also exhumed and cremated.
In his autobiography, Wu Liande called centralized cremation a "great historic initiative" that avoided "a new crisis in the coming spring caused by rats biting infected corpses and carrying bacteria."
Isolation
Morning of January 16, 1911 , on the Shanghai-Anfeng Railway train from Shanghai's Andong (today's Dandong) to Fengtian (today's Shenyang), a Chinese passenger about 40 years old "suddenly coughed up blood and died instantly." In the context of the plague epidemic, this murder caused great panic. The "Declaration" reported that the train was immediately stopped at the old Jiguanshan Station, and then all passengers were accommodated in the quarantine facility there for detailed inspection to prevent infection.
On January 15, the day before the Anfeng Railway passenger died, the roads between the Nanman and Jingfeng railway annexes to the provincial capital Fengtian were banned for epidemic prevention reasons.
Going forward further, on January 13, among the passengers taking the Beijing-Fengtian train from Fengtian, two patients infected with plague were discovered when the train arrived near Jinzhou . The train then returned with more than 400 passengers. Fengtian, and two days later these passengers were admitted to the Shenyang Yi Quarantine Facility.
It can be seen from the report of "Declaration" that quarantine facilities have become standard equipment in various places. The Nanman Railway Company built a new epidemic prevention isolation facility covering an area of 76 square meters in its affiliated area. The construction period was very fast and was completed in just two days. It can accommodate more than 3,000 people in total.
Located in Fujiadian, the epicenter of the epidemic, the situation is even more severe. Wu Liande and the medical staff led by him originally lived in the Metropolitan Hotel, but after Dr. Menie's death, they were all regarded as "people suffering from the plague" and were expelled from the hotel. This bad news also heralded a good change: the public knew that plague could be transmitted from person to person, and the concept of "quarantine" had been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
Under the leadership of Wu Liande, available buildings such as closed schools and vacated inns were rented and transformed into four areas: epidemic prevention office area, disinfection station, medical staff dormitory and isolation camp for contacts .
The panic about the plague can be seen from the following disinfection measures: every incoming letter and report must first be soaked in sterilizing solution, dried and then sent to the medical officer by the attendant; and after get off work every day, all Doctors, health police, stretcher bearers and corpse carriers are required to enter the disinfection room through the back door, first spray their clothes with 1:40 carbolic acid water, then change clothes and enter the bathroom naked, rinse their mouths and throats with flexible antibacterial agents, and then join Soak the body in hot water with Lysol or carbolic acid. All contaminated clothes are put into a 1:3000 mercury chloride solution or smoked with formalin.
The epidemic has its own spread rules. When Fujiadian stepped up its efforts to prevent the epidemic, it happened to be an outbreak period when the number of infections soared. Wu Liande recalled that within a month of the implementation of isolation and disinfection measures, the total number of plague deaths reached 3,413. On the most severe day, 183 people died, and an average of more than 110 people died every day.
Death tolls are rising elsewhere. "Zilin Bao" reported on February 16 from Hulan, Heilongjiang, that an average of about 20 people have died every day recently, but the death toll has suddenly begun to increase in the past two days. The inns and shops were still closed, the main roads were garrisoned, and both the quarantine house and the plague hospital had many shortcomings.
Chinese workers are being discriminated against due to the spread of the epidemic. Russia then tried to quarantine all Chinese workers. According to media reports, Russia issued a decision to ban Chinese workers on January 14, 1911, and all 1,500 Chinese workers on the Dongqing Railway were fired. The 3,000 Russian workers on the railway in China went on strike and threatened to go on strike because the company did not allow them to send their families back to their home countries to avoid the plague, and the army eventually had to intervene.
House burning
Looking back at the history of preventing and controlling the plague in Northeast China from 1910 to 1911, it can be said that Wu Liande played a vital role, but in retrospect, he also went too far, such as burning down the houses of plague infected people.
The reason why houses were burned down can be traced back to the insufficient medical understanding of plague at the time. Because he was worried about the spread of the disease in the patient's house, he burned it.
The practice of burning houses was initially popular in the Russian concessions."Shenbao" reported on January 20, 1911, that the Russians were very strict about epidemic prevention, and when a family member died of the plague, they would "burn all the items in the house." On Sandao Street in the Concession, a family asked the Russians for compensation of more than 10,000 yuan because their house was burned down. The Russians refused to pay compensation. It is expected that similar negotiations will increase in the future.
There is a similar situation in the Japanese jurisdiction. "Shenbao" reported that a Chinese died of an epidemic in Gongzhuling, Jilin Province on January 15, 1911. The Japanese authorities implemented disinfection measures there and placed a total of 16 people from five nearby families in a quarantine facility, and the houses were burned down.
Judging from the individual cases disclosed by the media at the time, in the three northeastern provinces, not only did house burning occur in the jurisdictions of Russia and Japan, but also Chinese epidemic prevention officials followed suit and copied it. In Guoziwei, Nanguan, Tieling, Liaoning, Sun Fuxing from Changchun was infected with the plague and died on the 26th of the twelfth lunar month. At the home of Cao Youyan, whom he visited, his father and son died at the same time on the second day of the first lunar month. The day after the death of Cao and his son, local governor Xu Daling and Chief Han led the patrols to burn the Cao family's house on the grounds "to avoid spreading the disease."
believes that the plague is spread through a kind of "qi", which is a wrong understanding of traditional medicine. House burning was a result of this perception.
The act of burning houses and their furniture caused considerable dissatisfaction among the people. Xi Shougang, Prime Minister of China's Diplomacy Bureau with Russia, once said in consultations with Russia: "The streets are full of shops, stores, goods and equipment have been burned, and the businessmen and people are really struggling to make a living. Can we compensate at our discretion?" It is said that the Russian side did not fully express it at the time. He refused, but then dozens of small-scale shops in Baofutun were burned down due to so-called epidemic prevention needs. These shop owners went to the Negotiation Bureau to demand compensation. The Russian side believes that there are too many tools for burning houses, and "I fear that the compensation will be too much, and it will only add to the rhetoric, and will not be allowed to do so."
Things within China's sphere of influence appear to be better. "Shenbao" mentioned in its report on February 15, 1911: "Six to seven thousand people have died in Chadong Province since the epidemic, which has spread to dozens of prefectures and counties. Those who were more seriously affected by the epidemic not only died of their entire families, but also The state of the house was also estimated to be burned by the officials. Within ten days, more than ten Chinese and foreign doctors and officers died from the epidemic, and soldiers and police officers died one after another. However, as far as the compensation was concerned, the expenses were not included. In addition, all other needs, such as purchasing medicine, building institutions, and preparing medical supplies, are urgent." From this, it can be seen that there will be appropriate valuation compensation for houses burned, but given the reality of limited funds, the valuation should be low.
In the Austro-Hungarian Concession in Tianjin, the burning of houses aroused public outrage and almost led to riots. In the end, the Austrian Concession authorities gave in and promised to burn only the furniture inside the house and preserve the houses. Near the Northeast Russian Railway, plague patients were found in a Chinese shop house but no one died. However, Russian law enforcement officials still insisted on burning the house down, and three Chinese people in the house died.
When Wu Liande recalled the past events of the plague in Northeast China in his autobiography, he did not mention the act of burning houses. But at the time, this was not an isolated phenomenon and clearly caused significant controversy. In April 1911, at the International Plague Research Conference held in Fengtian, one of the questions raised by Shi Zhaoji, the imperial envoy of the Qing Dynasty, to doctors from various countries attending the conference was: "Do you think it is advisable to burn down the houses of plague-infected people? Or just disinfect these houses?”
The act of burning houses seems a bit difficult to understand now. This is not necessary to prevent the spread of the epidemic, and it can even be said to be of little use. Nowadays, humans have more and more insights and effective prevention measures against infectious diseases, including plague, and unnecessary harm can be avoided, all thanks to the development of modern medical science.
City Lockdown
The out-of-control plague epidemic in Fujiadian eventually led the Chinese government to impose a military blockade on Fujiadian.
On January 22, 1911, "Zilin Daily" reported from Beijing that the epidemic had broken through Shanhaiguan , and several people had died of the epidemic near Beijing. The epidemic in a town near Yantai was very serious... Due to the widespread spread of plague in recent days It has spread to Beijing, so Beijing is now discussing the implementation of a traffic ban. The Beijing government received a protest from a Russian official, saying that Harbin Daotai was obstructing the implementation of epidemic prevention policies, so it dismissed him.The government is also discussing whether to agree to Russia's request to completely isolate Fujiadian, where more than 100 people die every day.
It can be seen from this report that the lockdown of Fujiadian was the product of Russian pressure. Before the city was closed, Shanhaiguan had begun to ban traffic. Trains that could have entered the customs from the northeast to the south were detained and were not allowed to pass.
It is not yet certain when the lockdown will begin. Wu Liande only mentioned in his autobiography that 1,160 Chinese infantrymen were transferred from Changchun to strengthen the implementation of the decision to close the city of Fujiadian. They were stationed in a large flour mill run by the Russians, and divided into groups to station and monitor everywhere outside the city day and night. In addition, 600 police officers were recruited to form a police unit to cooperate in the city.
A military blockade has been set up outside Fujiadian City, and no one is allowed to enter or leave the city without the permission of the Epidemic Prevention Bureau. Because there are 1,160 infantrymen outside the city and 600 police officers on duty inside the city day and night, it is almost impossible to evade supervision in this small city of only 24,000 people, so the lockdown has been implemented very strictly.
Fujiadian is not only isolated from the outside world, but also divided into four areas internally. Residents of each district must wear white, red, yellow, and blue armbands distributed by the government on their right arms. They are required to move only within their respective districts, and special permission is required to cross districts. Each district is headed by a senior medical officer, who leads enough assistants to inspect and disinfect the houses one by one in the district. Newly discovered plague patients are sent to plague hospitals, and family members and other contacts of patients are placed in isolation. camp, or sent to be quarantined in carriages borrowed from the Russian Railways.
The Russian Railways provided 120 train carriages, which were placed nearly two kilometers away from Fujiadian city. More than 1,000 people who had been exposed to the patients were quarantined inside. Once these people were diagnosed, they were immediately sent to the plague hospital. . There is no specific treatment, which means those diagnosed usually die within a day or two.
A particularly noteworthy exception is a Roman church in Fujiadian. When the epidemic was raging, more than 300 believers gathered here, and a French priest led them to worship and pray. The sick and healthy people did not shy away.
Father claimed to have extraterritorial jurisdiction, so he refused to implement the quarantine and reporting orders of suspected patients from the Epidemic Prevention Bureau. When he encountered a deceased person, he secretly transported the body out and buried it in the middle of the night. Later, because there were so many dead people, secret burial was no longer possible, and more and more coffins were piled up in the church. By the time the government intervened, 243 of more than 300 people had died of the plague, including French priests and a local Fujiadian priest.
Wu Liande said: "This incident shows that medical staff fighting the plague not only have to contend with fatalism due to ignorance and uneducation, but also compete with blind religious obedience."
Although the quarantine has been upgraded, the daily death toll Still appalling. "Zi Lin Daily" reported on February 9, 1911 that the epidemic was still spreading in towns in the Northeast. 3,800 corpses had been burned in Fujiadian, and now there are thousands of corpses piled up to await the arrival of firewood. The average daily death toll is about 80 in Fujiadian, 60 in Changchun, 35 in Fengtian, and 20 in Jilin. The
report also stated that some people requested that the entire Fujiadian town be burned to eliminate the epidemic. However, due to strong opposition from local residents and the trend of the epidemic slowing down, the initiative to burn the town was abandoned.
Aftermath
The end of the plague epidemic in Northeast China came suddenly. The turning point came unexpectedly, and by March 1, 1911, the death toll dropped to zero.
Although Wu Liande called this "this is indeed a victory for the scientific organization!" However, the scientific organization only slowed down the spread of germs in this process and failed to provide timely treatment. At the subsequent International Plague Research Conference, whether the plague epidemic disappeared naturally became an issue.
In the 20th century, the two largest plague epidemics in China were the Northeastern plague in 1910-1911 and the Shanxi plague in 1917-1918. In terms of the severity of the epidemic, the plague killed more people in Northeast China. It also opened the door to modern epidemic prevention methods in China, which is a milestone in the history of medicine.
Although epidemic prevention in Northeast China has provided many useful experiences, it also has painful lessons. For example, severe cross-infection occurred during the isolation of suspected patients.One example is that in January 1911, hundreds of laborers and farmers traveling in third-class carriages were uniformly and forcibly quarantined in a small inn near Fengtian. The inn was low, dark, and dirty, not suitable for living, and there were no proper isolation facilities. As a result, people continued to die every day. On the night of January 23, more than 100 quarantined persons forcibly escaped, and the epidemic spread. The death toll in Fengtian was The surge occurred a week later...
Compared with the Fujiadian lockdown of 24,000 people more than 100 years ago, the Wuhan lockdown of 11 million people undoubtedly faces more challenges. On this issue, Fujiadian can provide limited insights, and the gains and losses of Wuhan's lockdown may not be clearer until the epidemic is over.
(Part of the historical facts in this article refer to "Plague Fighter - Wu Liande's Autobiography", Hunan Education Press, March 2011 edition)
