From respirator to Wu’s mask: the transition of personal protective equipment in the Manchurian plague

ABSTRACT This article traces the development of personal protective equipment in response to the Manchurian plague of 1910. It does so by means of the language and practice of tropical medicine. The respirators (huxiqi) made of gauze and cotton that appeared at that time were first designed collectively by Chinese physicians in Harbin. However, such huxiqi were renamed “Mukden Masks” by the predominant English-speaking physicians at the International Plague Conference at Mukden in 1911 and presented as a Western innovation without acknowledging Chinese contributions. As Wu Liande gained more and more authority starting in the 1920s, he not only justified the application of masks in epidemics through a localized strategy of tropical medicine, but also reclaimed authorship of the Mukden mask. This allowed later generations of medical historians to acknowledge the making of “Wu’s mask” (Wushi kouzhao). The personal protective equipment born in the Manchurian plague thus became a physical portrayal of the asymmetric and yet dynamic knowledge-production and -circulation between China and the West.