On June 13, 1986, an old man was about to complete his glorious life in Shanghai. Before dying, he tried to write the will by hand, but his hands were shaking so badly that the words he wrote could not be recognized, and finally he had no choice but to dictate the will: he donated his body to Shanghai Medical University for research and use. This respectable and lamentable old man is one of the leaders of new Chinese health work, Comrade Bai Beiwu, former president of the Shanghai Red Cross Society and former director of the Shandong Provincial Health Department.
As early as 1982, Bai Beiwu, who has long been engaged in clinical medical and health leadership, was well aware of the importance of human anatomy in medicine and teaching, but due to the influence of feudal ideas for thousands of years, the Chinese people were resistant to the matter of donating bodies after death. In this regard, Comrade Bai Beiwu joined some comrades in the medical and health circles to advocate the donation of remains, and was the first to sign his name on the proposal. Under his initiative, Shanghai has established a number of body collection stations, before the unfortunate death of Comrade Bai Beiwu, more than 2,000 people have volunteered to register and donate their remains, and the receiving stations have received more than 200 bodies, providing valuable resources for medical education.
In fact, Comrade Bai Beiwu is an old revolutionary. As early as 1938, Li Yu, secretary of the Shandong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, rushed to Yan'an to report on his work, when the Shandong region launched an armed uprising, which not only had a demand for troop strength, but also was very important for troop building. Li Yu suggested to Chairman Mao Zedong that it was necessary to send some cadres who could fight wars and knew how to build troops to Shandong. Chairman Mao immediately agreed, and immediately dispatched Guo Hongtao, then secretary of the party committee of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, to organize people and horses to quickly support Shandong, and Guo Hongtao's first thought was his elementary school classmate, who was also a white soldier of our military doctor.
Guo Hongtao was a member of the Central Advisory Committee and then the Party Secretary of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region
In the war years, in fact, the deaths directly caused by the war were a small number, and the injuries and diseases and infectious diseases caused by the war were the main reasons for the large number of deaths. Doctors are a scarce and valuable resource for both the military and the local population. Guo Hongtao considered the situation in Shandong and first thought of taking Bai Beiwu to the past. After Bai Beiwu knew, he agreed without saying a word, and also brought his wife, who was also a doctor, to join Guo Hongtao's cadre assistance team.
At that time, our party's anti-Japanese armed forces in Shandong were still in the initial stage, and Comrade Bai Beiwu had to work in Shandong for a long time not only as a doctor but also by organizing and leading the medical and health construction in the base areas. He has successively served as the minister of health of the Shandong Column of the Eighth Route Army, the minister of health of the 115th Division, the minister of health of the Shandong Military Region, the director of the General Bureau of Shanshen Health, and the minister of health of the East China Military Region, and has made outstanding contributions to the revolutionary work in Shandong.
As an outstanding medical cadre of our party, Bai Beiwu has been running in the forefront of the line of fire for many years, and from 1938 to 1949, large and small battles were indispensable to the figure of Bai Beiwu and the medical team he led, pulling countless wounded and sick back from the line of death. In 1942, the Battle of Koshiyama began, and Bai Beiwu often operated on the soldiers for several days. One of the small warriors was shot in the chest, forming a penetrating wound, with a severe infection and sepsis. There were no antibiotics at the time, and the other medical staff were powerless to do anything about the little soldier's injuries and were ready for the aftermath. But Bai Beiwu did not give up, he carefully examined the wound, decided to open the chest drainage surgery, clean the infected suppuration site, and finally the little warrior miraculously recovered. As a leading cadre in the health sector, Bai Beiwu is admired for both medical skills and medical ethics.
The command organs of the first column of the Eighth Route Army were merged for a group photo, and the fifth from the left in the second row was Comrade Bai Beiwu
As one of the three major battles, the Huaihai Campaign is one of the few in the history of world wars in terms of combat scale and casualties, and medical support work is very important. As the forward health minister of the East China Military Region, Bai Beiwu led the eight field hospitals and four medical clinics of the East China Military Region to undertake the task of treating the wounded on the northern front. In order to shorten the rescue time of the wounded, he ordered the hospitals to be as close to the front line as possible and let the wounded receive surgical treatment as quickly as possible, for which he also put forward the "three fast" requirements of "fast collection, fast turning, and fast treatment" to treat the wounded as much as possible.
After the Huaihai Campaign entered the middle and late stages, the front moved south, and the seriously wounded hospital at that time was located in Linyi, which undoubtedly increased the transport distance of the wounded, for this reason, Bai Beiwu quickly took measures to relocate the serious injury hospital to the east of Xuzhou, and immediately used the Xuzhou Army General Hospital of the Nationalist Army that had just taken over to treat the wounded of our army. In this way, the efficiency of treatment has been greatly improved. Later, after the war, more than 24,000 wounded were treated in the hospitals in the front of the East China Military Region, not including the considerable number of Kuomintang wounded who were abandoned by the Nationalist army at that time. It is precisely because of the excellent health protection capabilities of the front hospital of the East China Military Region that Bai Beiwu is known as the "Weiqin Strategist." ”
Stretcher teams from the Shandong Liberated Area treated the wounded abandoned by the Kuomintang
Of course, as an excellent medical cadre of our party, in addition to providing perfect medical protection for the troops, Bai Beiwu also actively led the treatment of the local people, especially in the field of infectious diseases, and made great contributions.
During the war, due to the massacre of the Japanese puppet army, production was greatly damaged, and more seriously, it caused a series of epidemics, at that time, malaria, black fever, cholera and other infectious diseases emerged in an endless stream, and hundreds of thousands of people in the province died because of infectious diseases. Bai Beiwu has always led our party's medical personnel to walk in the forefront of fighting the epidemic and treating people with infectious diseases.
At that time, the puppet army Wuhua Cultural Department in the Luzhong area was quite rampant, and the troops of the Luzhong Military Region of our army launched a battle against Wu Huawen, and when they were stationed in Linqu County, they found that the local plague was prevalent, some of which had been infected throughout the village, and the bodies of many of the dead were not buried. Bai Beiwu, then minister of health of the Shandong Military Region, immediately organized a medical team to go to the treatment. Despite the limited conditions at that time, Bai Beiwu still slackened off the microscope and laboratory equipment, because the plague is a general term, and it is most important to quickly determine the type of infectious disease, so that it can be targeted treatment.
Bai Beiwu led the medical workers to hike for three days, which reached Linqu, as soon as he arrived there, Bai Beiwu did not have time to rest, and after finding the person in charge to understand the situation, he immediately opened a clinic and accepted patient treatment. Through analysis and diagnosis and tests, Bai Beiwu quickly determined that the outbreak was malaria and epidemic encephalitis, and carried out aggressive treatment.
However, due to the very limited conditions in the area of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression at that time, there were not enough drugs at all, and it was impossible to use special drugs for treatment. In the process of long-term medical practice, Bai Beiwu has long developed a set of plans for the treatment of infectious diseases with Chinese herbal medicine. He immediately gathered local doctors, provided his own prescriptions, and mobilized all the doctors to boil as many Chinese herbs as possible for the local people to take for the infected people.
In fact, at that time, not only was there a shortage of medicines, but there was not enough food to eat. The patient's resistance is already weak, and he can't eat enough, and it is difficult to recover even with drug treatment. Although Bai Beiwu was the minister of health, he was also a revolutionary fighter, and in the face of the phenomenon that the masses did not have enough to eat, Bai Beiwu did not sit idly by, but actively sought out Qian Jun, deputy commander of the Luzhong Military Region, and asked him to support grain. At that time, Qian Jun actually had no surplus grain, but in the face of the request of Bai Beiwu and the masses, Qian Jun decided to launch an attack on the Japanese puppet army, and finally captured a large amount of grain from the Japanese puppet army, solving the problem of the local people's food. With medical care and food, the local epidemic was quickly contained.
The scene when the infectious disease broke out in the Republic of China
It is precisely because Bai Beiwu, whether on the front line of the army or among the masses, is doing his best to save lives, so he is revered as a "bodhisattva" by the local military and people. This title may seem a little inappropriate today, but at that time it expressed the simplest and most sincere feelings of the military and the people.
In 1945, the General Bureau of Health of our Party in Shandong Province was formally established, and Bai Beiwu was appointed as the Minister of Health and Director of the General Bureau of Health of the Shandong Military Region. After becoming the director, the first thing Bai Beiwu did was to set up a "roving medical team" to deal with the prevalence of infectious diseases in the local area.
As a leader of the health department in a region, Bai Beiwu is well aware of the lack of medical and health conditions in our army, so Bai Beiwu not only fulfills his duties in his own work, but also actively expands the relations between all aspects and strives for more medical resources for our party.
After the victory of the War of Resistance, the Kuomintang transferred the expeditionary force back to the civil war in order to compete for territory. Among them, the expeditionary force returning from Myanmar and other places came to Shandong, brought cholera germs, and soon the epidemic broke out in Linyi.
On July 19, 1946, the Shandong General Bureau of Health received an emergency report that an epidemic had occurred in Zhuchen Town, Linyi County, and there were more than 4,000 people in the town, and in just five days, more than 200 people were infected and more than 20 people died. Faced with this situation, Bai Beiwu organized a medical team overnight, came to Zhuchen Town at dawn the next day, quickly contacted the local party committee and government, and while rescuing critically ill patients, organized a militia to block the streets, clean up the sanitation, and block the spread of cholera germs. However, due to limited conditions and unsatisfactory treatment effects, the number of deaths is increasing, causing panic in villagers, and the epidemic began to spread around the periphery.
Cholera is a severe diarrheal infectious disease caused by Vibrio cholerae, which is characterized by rapid onset, strong contagiousness and high mortality. The most effective way to face the outbreak of this infectious disease is cholera vaccines and antibiotics. However, due to the limited conditions of our Party at that time, there were no such special drugs. Then at that time, there were no channels for obtaining these drugs in China, in fact, there were.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was established, and there are also aid agencies in China. At that time, ms. Reddide, an American doctor, was sent to Shandong to manage the medical resources, and Bai Beiwu established a good working relationship with her in her work. Faced with the serious situation of the cholera epidemic, Bai Beiwu immediately thought of seeking assistance from Reddide. He first invited Redd to visit the affected area, and after the inspection, a treatment plan was formulated, and Redd immediately applied for 50,000 cholera vaccines from the General Administration. In the end, with the joint efforts of Bai Beiwu, Reddide and all parties, it took more than two months to finally extinguish the cholera epidemic.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Bai Beiwu continued to engage in health and medical leadership and continued to contribute to China's medical cause. During the Period of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Bai Beiwu led the Shandong health and medical departments and successively established 11 rehabilitation hospitals, receiving and treating a total of 15,998 wounded and sick people in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, providing a strong medical logistical support for the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
Although Bai Beiwu was a medical worker, he still made indelible contributions to the cause of Revolution and Liberation in our country. In times of war, medical workers were an extremely valuable resource, and in times of peace, the health of the people was a top priority, and the protection of medical workers was still indispensable. As a veteran military doctor, Comrade Bai Beiwu not only provided strong medical protection for the soldiers on the battlefield, but also cared about the diseases of the masses and made fruitful contributions. At the same time, Comrade Bai Beiwu was very open-minded, never forgot the cause of medical education in our country, and still thought of donating his body to the medical school for research before his death. This noble character and medical ethics are worthy of admiration by each of our descendants.