(Vientiane History Special Author: Wen He)
[July 3, 1898] Huang Minglong's biography: the "great savior" of family planning, the scientist who invented the oral contraceptive pill
On July 3, 1898, Huang Minglong was born in Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, his father was a late Qing Xiucai, and his mother was born in Xiangmendi, who loved to read, help others, and enjoyed a virtuous name among relatives and friends.
Huang Minglong has been eager to learn since childhood. In 1915 (at the age of 17), he was admitted to Zhejiang Medical College (now Zhejiang Medical University) to study pharmacy. In 1919 (at the age of 21), after graduating from university, Huang Minglong went to the University of Zurich in Switzerland and the University of Berlin in Germany to study.
In 1924 (at the age of 26), Huang Minglong received his doctorate and returned to China. He helped his second brother run medical magazines and then returned to his alma mater as a teacher. Later, he worked for the Central Department of Health.
He found that the market was full of counterfeit drugs, such as cinchona cream for malaria, which did not contain the slightest cinchona cream. He demanded strict examination of the drug's ingredients, but in collusion between officials and businessmen, his advice was not adopted.
Feeling helpless, he went to Germany again in 1934 (at the age of 36) to study at the Institute of Chemistry at the University of Würzburg. In 1938, he joined a German pharmaceutical company and later went to England to study female hormones.
In 1940 (at the age of 42), Huang Minglong returned to China and worked as a researcher at the Institute of Chemistry of academia sinica and as a professor at Southwest Union University. At that time, the scientific research conditions were extremely poor, experimental equipment and chemical reagents were extremely scarce, he tried to take local materials, using only hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide, alcohol and other reagents, under the interference of frequent air raid alarms, the three-dimensional heterogeneous study of the roundworm drug Yamadori was carried out, laying a theoretical foundation for follow-up research at home and abroad.
In 1945 (at the age of 47), Huang Minglong was invited to do research in the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University. While he was doing an experiment, part of the reaction was exhausted due to the loosening of the cork stopper. However, he was surprised to find that the output rate was even higher.
As a result, Huang Minglong improved the experimental method, shortening the reaction time from 50 hours to 3 hours, and the yield rate increased from 40% to 90%. After Huang Minglong published his paper, his improved method quickly became the standard method, written into textbooks, known as Huang Minglong reduction method.
In October 1952 (at the age of 54), Huang Minglong detoured through Europe after many twists and turns and risks, returned to his homeland for the third time, and served as the head of the Department of Chemistry at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences. In 1955, he was rated as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and transferred to the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1958, he invented the seven-step synthetic cortisone and won the National Creative Invention Award.
In 1964 (at the age of 66), Huang Minglong attended the Third National People's Congress, and Zhou Enlai mentioned the importance of family planning work in the government work report. Huang Minglong remembered the research on the use of steroid hormones as oral contraceptives in foreign literature, and proposed the establishment of a special family planning group of the State Science and Technology Commission to conduct research.
Huang Minglong as the deputy team leader, the research progress is very rapid, in less than a year, many important steroids such as progesterone, testosterone, prednisone and dexamethasone, etc., have been produced.
He also first discovered the contraceptive effects of megesterone, and the use of megesterone as an oral contraceptive was the first in China. Huang Minglong has improved its synthesis method, which has greatly reduced the cost.
On July 1, 1979 (at the age of 81), Huang Minglong died of illness.
In September 1982, family planning was established as a basic national policy. The oral contraceptive pill invented by Huang Minglong was widely used. Countless families have not only received "sexual blessings" but also avoided the "devastation" of barbaric violence, which can be called the great savior of that era.
(The 398th work of the Vientiane History and Biography Writing Camp, and the 7th work of the camper "Wen He")