Sarah Xia Yu - Masks and Geopolitics in Richard Pearson Strong’s photos of the Manchurian Plague Epidemic, 1910—1911

Sarah Yu

In the fall of 1910, the Chinese territory of Manchuria in the country’s northeast was struck by an epidemic of pneumonic plague. By the time the epidemic ended in the spring of 1911, close to 60,000 people had fallen victim.[1] In late December 1910, Dr. Wu Lien-teh, a Malay-born, British-educated, ethnically-Chinese physician then based in Beijing, was recommended by China’s imperial government to investigate the worsening epidemic. There, he diagnosed a new variation of plague, devised innovative methods for prevention and personal protection, and established the North Manchurian Plague Prevention Service, considered to be the first national public health administration in modern China. The Countway Library’s collection of photographs collected by Dr. Richard Pearson Strong, an American physician, later Harvard Medical School faculty member, and Wu’s colleague, detail the course of the plague control process and depict many of Dr. Wu’s measures in action. These photos are significant not only for researchers of the history of medicine or infectious disease, but also of international relations and the geopolitics of global health in the early 20th century. They offer a perspective on how the development of medical and scientific knowledge was often contingent on the political context and choices made by the stakeholders during times of crisis.

 

After Wu arrived in Manchuria at the end of December, he trained local personnel to form “inspection” squads so that victims of the plague could quickly be identified and isolated. In the photo titled “Inspection squad starting on rounds” (fig. 1), we see two men carrying a stretcher, presumably taking their orders from a medical doctor (dressed in white) and a member of the police or military (dressed in black).[2] These inspection squads would go door-to-door in residential areas, check individuals with plague-like symptoms (“suspects”) and contacts of confirmed cases (“contacts”) and take them away on stretchers if necessary. In the photo titled “Plague suspected [sic] discovered on inspection tour” (fig. 2, below), a man walks out of the house in front of several men clothed in white robes, with face and head coverings. Just behind them, towards the right of the picture, are several local men, looking on as the plague “suspect” is escorted likely to an isolation hospital (fig. 3, below), where his blood and sputum would be tested.[3] If his samples were found to be positive for pneumonic plague, he would stay in isolation to await inevitable death.

 

Read the entire essay HERE