3 - Globalizing Biomedicine through Sino-Japanese Networks: The Case of National Medical College, Beijing, 1912–1937

Summary

. . . the Japanese have, indirectly and without any spirit of altruism, accomplished more in the introduction of modern medicine [to China] than any other nation.

—E. V. Cowdry

Dr. Tang Erhe (1878–1940) could not keep silent at the meeting of the National Education Assembly in Beijing late in 1912 when he heard that the top educational priority of the new Republic of China was to establish more schools of politics and law. China would not save itself from the forces that threatened it merely by training politicians, lawyers, and diplomats, Tang argued—science was needed to save the nation, and science could only be established by building institutions for training and research.

Tang had recently graduated from Kanazawa Medical Technical College (Kanazawa igaku senmon gakkō) in Japan and returned to his native Hangzhou to set up a modern hospital and medical school while also becoming drawn into the provincial and national politics of the Xinhai Revolution. The revolutionary medical doctor, Sun Yat-sen, became the Republic’s first president, while Tang Erhe filled in as speaker of the provisional national assembly that elected Sun. When people took note of how remarkable it was that two modern-style physicians played prominent roles in the provisional Republican government, a saying became popular that remarked on the singularity that both the speaker of the assembly and the president of the Republic were both physicians. China had become known as “the Sick Man of East Asia” (dongya bingfu), but neither physician seemed able to implement his prescription to save China. Sun Yat-sen was forced to resign within six weeks in favor of strongman Yuan Shikai, while Tang resigned as speaker and returned to his medical work in Hangzhou. Medical science itself was a form of politics for Tang Erhe, and the reproduction of like-minded professionals combined with establishment of institutions of scientific research was his solution to China’s failed revolution. But when asked to become an offi-cial adviser to the Ministry of Education, and soon thereafter to start a central government–administered medical school in the capital, Tang accepted and left for Beijing.