An Unchallengeable Value: Foreign Physicians, Chinese Medical Elites, and Normalizing Masks in Semi-Colonial China

Abstract

During the 1910–11 Great Manchurian Plague, which caused as many as 60,000 deaths within the space of a few months, face masks made of two layers of gauze and a cotton pad were introduced as standard protocol to protect physicians from inhaling airborne contagions (Lynteris 2018; Zhang 2021). After being appointed the top official of the NorthManchurian Plague Prevention Service (Dongsansheng fangyi shiwu zongchu東 三省防疫事務總處), Wu Liande (Wu Lien-Teh) 伍連德 (1879–1960) realized the importance of wearing a mask in plague prevention services could not be overstated. However, he and other physicians who shared the same commitment to the efficacy of masks also admitted that “it will be very difficult to enforce the wearing of masks” among “untrained laymen,” because for people with little knowledge of infectious diseases, the wearing of a mask “may appear ridiculous or uncalled for” (Wu 1926: 399, 398). Therefore, making indigenous people without medical training utilize a medical device properly became a long-lasting issue that confounded public health promoters in modern China. To further complicate matters, China was semi-colonized, divided into multiple regions by different foreign powers from the late Qing Dynasty through the Republican period (1912–1949). Because of this large and diverse foreign influence, studying all cases of foreign presence is beyond the scope of the paper. This study,