Wu Lien-teh: Face mask pioneer who helped defeat a plague epidemic

By Sam Wong

Today’s Google doodle celebrates Wu Lien-teh, an epidemiologist who pioneered the use of face masks to control an epidemic over a century before the advent of covid-19.

Born in Penang, Malaysia, on this day in 1879 and educated in the UK, Wu was recruited to work on a deadly disease outbreak in northeastern China in December 1910. The first people to be affected were marmot trappers and fur traders, part of a flourishing trade in marmot pelts in the region.

From a postmortem examination – the first performed in China – Wu succeeded in isolating and …