In the first year of the republic, the land of China was so lively, and the negotiations between the north and the south plus the six provinces of Shandong were in full swing, although there seemed to be no objection to the post of defense minister, Wu Chenxuan also expressed his willingness to take office. However, the South was not ashamed to propose to exchange the post of General Minister of Taxation for the post of General of the Ministry of Taxation, and all of them lost their memory of the gambling contract, which made the Beiyang and the six provincial regimes in the north once again dumbfounded at the lower limit of the credibility of the revolutionary party.

However, by the beginning of November, the snow had begun to cover the frozen ground in the northeast, and Harbin Fujiadian was still stubbornly operating between Maodong and the merchants as usual. However, the arrival of a disaster does not seem to have the warning of that gust of wind, and at first there were only one or two cases of infected people reported every day, and by mid-December, there were 4~10 people per day, and by late December, the number of people increased to hundreds. Because the number of infections is increasing so fast, professional quarantine personnel are unable to personally check every case, and after receiving information from the patient's family, only people who rely on temporary employment and no experience in epidemic prevention can go to the screening, and then transfer the person who is thought to be infected to the isolation camp. In order to evade police inspections and mandatory disinfection, some families dump the bodies of patients in the streets at night. The next morning, the police collected the bodies, put them in thin wooden coffins, and buried them in mass graves. If a patient dies at home, the family can be transported to a burial outside the city without anyone caring about it. Nurses, nurses, sterilizers, and burial workers were all required to wear protective clothing and masks, but they all turned a deaf ear and wore masks around their necks, causing many people to be infected.

After the outbreak of the epidemic, although Zhang Zuolin was not the later king of the Northeast, under the influence of Shandong, he still paid more attention to people's livelihood. At that time, two Western doctors were sent from Mukden to deal with it, but the only people they could mobilize and dispose of were five nurses who came with them. Most local chief executives know almost nothing about modern quarantine and epidemic prevention. Wu Liande, a doctor at the time, later recalled: He met him the day after he arrived, rushed to the county yamen at 9 o'clock in the morning, and actually waited in the living room for more than half an hour. After talking to him, Wu Liande was impressed: "It was this ignorance that complicated the situation and allowed the epidemic to spread farther south. ”

On the third day of his arrival in Harbin, Wu Liande learned that a Japanese woman in Fujiadian who had intermarried with locals had died of the plague, and he decided to dissect the body.

At that time, China was completely ignorant of modern medicine. In the old belief, the dissection of a corpse was undoubtedly a great disrespect to the deceased, not only facing the pressure of social customs, but also from a legal point of view, it was not allowed. So Wu Liande could only do it in secret. This autopsy was also the first recorded pathological autopsy in China. On November 22, at the urging of Wu Liande and others, the Fengtian Overseer's Office issued a proclamation on autopsy regulations, followed by detailed rules, the first official legal document in Chinese history to allow autopsies.

At that time, there was no laboratory, so Wu Liande and his assistant borrowed a room from the local general chamber of commerce to do blood tests. Samples were fixed for tissue biopsy testing. Under Beck's microscope, Woollende clearly saw an oval-shaped bacterium, the plague. Wu Liande immediately sent a telegram to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing to report the incident and proposed preliminary epidemic prevention measures: control railway and road traffic to prevent the spread of the plague; Fujiadian, an isolated epidemic area; Recruiting doctors, etc. from Kannai.

Wu Liande found that the outbreak clearly conflicted with previous perceptions of the plague. When he first arrived in Harbin, Dr. Yao confessed his observations to him: the houses in Fujiadian were low and dirty, the doors and windows were closed in winter, and the air was not well ventilated, and one person in the room was infected with the disease and quickly infected the whole family - he believed that the disease was an acute lung inflammation transmitted from person to person through droplets and breathing. Before Wu Liande arrived in Harbin, Japan's South Manchurian Railway also sent a Japanese doctor to investigate the cause, this Japanese doctor was a student of Kitasato Shibazaburo, as soon as he arrived in Harbin, he immediately hired people to catch mice, hoping to find * Y. pestis bacillus in mice. Hundreds of animals were dissected in a row, but not a single case of plague bacteria was found. Based on various examples, Wu Liande boldly proposed that the plague epidemic in Fujiadian could be transmitted through droplets between breaths without animal vectors, which he named "pneumonic plague".

In order to prevent droplet infection, Wu Liande designed an extremely simple double-layer gauze bag mask, that is, with two layers of gauze and a built-in absorbent cotton wool, which can isolate patients by wearing it, and the cost was only 2 and a half dollars at that time. Later, at the International Plague Research Conference held in Shenyang, countries unanimously approved the adoption of such masks. To this day, medical staff still use this mask and call it "Wu's mask".

By January of the second year of the Republic, when the epidemic was at its most critical, Wu Liande could no longer control the situation. Wu Chenxuan, who had just assumed the post of defense minister, dispatched a battalion of specialized anti-chemical warfare units of the former Wuyi New Army into the Harbin epidemic area. Originally, Zhang Zuolin did not plan to let the Wuyi New Army cross the border, but he could not stand the fact that the Shandong side had already stabbed these into the news media, and Zhang Zuolin was also a monkey spirit, so he immediately changed his attitude, not only arranging food and lodging for this unit, but also personally mobilizing vehicles and supplies. Of course, the number of this lightly armed force is the main reason for his peace of mind.

Under the command of the army, Fujiadian was divided into 4 districts. Each district is headed by a military doctor, with two assistants, four medical students, and a large number of medical and chemical defense officers. The emergency team is divided into many positions such as diagnosis, disinfection, burial, and standing. Every day, more than 40 search teams were dispatched from various districts to check the epidemic from house to house. As soon as someone was found to be infected with the plague, they were immediately sent to an epidemic prevention hospital, and their house was disinfected with raw sulfur and carbolic acid.

In order to successfully implement the regional epidemic prevention plan, Zhang Zuolin also specially transferred an infantry regiment composed of 1,160 soldiers from Changchun. They were housed in an empty flour mill in Russia outside the city, tasked with traffic control in the affected area. The Wuyi New Army's anti-chemical battalion stipulates that residents in Fujiadian must wear badges on their left arms when traveling, which are divided into four types: white, red, yellow, and blue according to different badges in each district. Residents of each district wear a different badge on their left arm and are allowed to move around the district, but they must apply for a special permit to travel to other districts. Even the soldiers in the district must strictly follow this rule and are not allowed to move around. Strict police forces make it almost impossible for anyone to sneak across the blockade.

According to the condition of the patients admitted, the diagnosis hospitals are divided into epidemic hospitals, mild hospitals, suspected hospitals and epidemic prevention hospitals. Each hospital has the positions of medical officer, general clerk, pharmacist, nurse, inspector and so on. It not only provides treatment for patients with different conditions, but also avoids cross-infection between them. "The term 'suspected ward' was pioneered by Wu Liande, and we still use it today."

Fujiadian's epidemic prevention measures have set an example for the entire Northeast. Subsequently, the Russian-inhabited areas of Harbin, Fengtian, Changchun, and Heilongjiang provinces have established epidemic prevention systems following the model of Fujiadian. Of course, the six provinces of Shandong have also accepted the experience of the epidemic, adding the content of the national three-defense training on the basis of the original reserves, and the civil affairs side has also begun to carry out zoning management and emergency plan drills for urban residents, which has also played a very significant role in previous wars.

At the later International Plague Congress in Mukden, it was concluded: "In the month before the new epidemic prevention mechanism was established, the total number of deaths was 3,413, and at the time of the new epidemic prevention mechanism, almost 200 deaths were killed every day, but after 30 days, zero deaths were recorded." ”

Soon, at the suggestion of Wu Liande and the anti-chemical warfare soldiers, he borrowed some train cars from the Russian Eastern Railway Company as temporary isolation camps, anyway, the Russians did not dare to use these carriages, and they could be generously lent to the Chinese in exchange for international praise, and the old Maozi was not much worse than the Jews in this regard. After the New Year, 60 "clay tank cars" were parked on the railway line in the Liangtai area (now the stadium in the eighth district of Daowai) to be used as temporary isolation camps to accommodate the families and contacts of plague patients, as well as suspected people with coughing and other symptoms. The doctor will see you daily and release you from isolation if your body temperature is normal for 7 consecutive days.

This time, 120 train cars were borrowed for epidemic prevention and used as quarantine camps. At the International Plague Congress, Wu Liande cited this as the most important lesson in his report: "It is the most effective form of isolation, and it can be quickly established anywhere near the railway." ”

"Before the invention of antibiotics, the most effective way to deal with plague was to isolate and break the chain of infection between people, and the speed and scale of the plague spread would naturally be controlled." Researcher Ma Xuebo introduced. Since the 17th century, people have been in quarantine since the beginning of the year. 100 years ago, Spain used railway cars as temporary wards, but "the use of 120 cars on such a large scale has never been seen in the history of epidemic prevention".

At that time, Harbin was the world's largest soybean distribution center and trading market. A large number of laborers from Shandong and Zhili provinces gathered here to enter the northeast. In addition to the general labor force, thousands of small traders also move north with the seasons. Although there is no precise statistics on this part of the floating population, 100,000 people is not an overestimate. At that time, it was the end of the year, and according to the traditional concept of the Chinese, they had to do everything possible to return to their hometowns for the New Year, and these huge groups of people must include a large number of plague infected people. Once the large-scale Spring Festival homecoming wave begins, the plague will inevitably spread to Kannai.

At the beginning of the plague outbreak, there were no restrictions on the movement of people. At that time, more than 1,000 laborers came by train every day from the northern epidemic area, and then transferred to the railway managed by Chinese to continue south, so Mukden became the hardest hit area of the plague. At that time, there were also strong calls for the closure of the railway traffic from Changchun to Mukden, but this was not adopted.

After negotiations, the Japanese-controlled South Manchurian Railway was suspended on January 14 of the second year of the Republic, and the Russian-controlled Dongqing Railway, its second- and third-class trains were suspended on January 19, and the first-class trains were quarantined. Traffic in the Tohoku region has largely come to a standstill. Shanhaiguan is the only way to enter the customs from the northeast, and on January 13, the Beiyang Beijing government also set up an inspection office in Shanhaiguan, and all passengers who go south through here must stay here for 5 days to observe. These measures were so severe and thorough that when Xiong Bingsan and Tang Hualong returned from the disaster relief arrangements in Northeast China, they were able to return to Beijing after staying at Shanhaiguan for five days without exception.

On January 15, the War Department sent troops to garrison Shanhaiguan to prevent passengers and goods from entering the customs; On January 21, another order was issued to "stop all trains in Beijing and Tianjin to prevent the spread of trains". At this point, the railway traffic inside and outside the Kansai was completely cut off. At that time, the Tianjin Health Bureau made a special regulations for inspecting trains, and even required that even foreigners' belongings must be checked, but the foreigners believed that they had no resistance to the plague, which was probably one of the few cases of foreigners obeying the management of the Chinese* government in the late Qing Dynasty and the early years of the Republic.

At the beginning of the plague, the government provided coffins for the dead to bury them; Bodies found on the street were also collected by the government, placed in coffins and transported to cemeteries. Later, when the number of deaths increased, the bodies were placed directly in the cemetery. As the weather gets colder, the ground is frozen hard, not to mention digging a deep hole, but even digging a shallow pit, it is very difficult. So the bodies were also abandoned on the surface of the cemetery for at least 6 weeks. Wu Liande noticed that the corpses were in a variety of positions, and some even remained seated, presumably because they were thrown out by their families in their dying days, and they made a last-ditch effort to keep warm in the extreme cold. Zhang Tiande, the battalion commander of the chemical defense battalion at that time, was worried that the cemetery would become a large freezer of giant plague bacilli. If rats or other animals come into contact with these carcasses, and the animals pass them on to the people in the city, all measures against the epidemic will be wiped out.

Zhang Tiande's intuition felt that rat germs could survive under the ground, but he didn't have time to do experiments to prove this. Later, Russian experts proved this - in the extremely low temperatures of the harsh winter in Harbin, the pneumonic plague germ can survive for at least three months. Later studies have confirmed this.

It is imperative that these bodies be disposed of as soon as possible, and that the only way to do so is through centralized cremation. But Zhang Tiande also knew what a huge challenge this would be for the Chinese at that time.

Even as a soldier, he did not dare to rashly challenge the ethics of the Chinese people. He thought about it, and the best way was to write to the government and ask President Qiao to give an order to calm down the opposition of the people. However, he also knew that he had to win the support of local officials and squires first. And it went very well - he asked the men to follow him in a car to the cemetery to see the horrific scene, and they agreed. Therefore, when Zhang Tiande and Wu Liande, the doctor in charge, jointly sent a letter to the Nanjing government at that time, requesting the promulgation of permission for cremation, the officials and businessmen of Harbin also jointly submitted their feelings to Zhang Zuolin, the commander of the Fengtian Military Administration, hoping to approve the cremation.

On January 30, they finally received a telegram from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China for approval (the strange thing is that the issue that was originally an internal affair was actually issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and they really did not understand the logic of the revolutionary party). Early the next morning, Zhang Tiande and his team immediately took action -- Dr. Wu Liande later gave a detailed account of the handling method at the International Plague Conference: The army hired 200 workers and 100 soldiers from the Wuyi New Army's anti-chemical battalion to divide the coffins and corpses into 22 piles in units of 100. First, explosives were used to blast the frozen ground and dig a pit 20 feet square, 10 feet deep, capable of holding 500 bodies at a time. Then, at the rate of 10 gallons per 100 corpses, kerosene was poured on top of the corpses with a fire truck. The fire was lit, and the corpses burned quickly and violently, and more than 2,200 corpses were extinguished. Wu Liande later wrote that as he watched the bodies of his relatives turn to ashes, 20,000 Fujiadian citizens were expressionless and "stunned." As for how Zhang Tiande and Wu Liande commanded the plague with professionalism and dedication, a comment in the "Far Eastern Daily" may be the fullest: "Zhang Tiande, battalion officer of the Wuyi New Army's anti-chemical warfare battalion, and Wu Liande, chief medical officer of the Harbin Epidemic Prevention Bureau, have worked tirelessly to handle epidemic prevention matters since they arrived in Kazakhstan. ”

At that time, relevant personnel from the Russian epidemic prevention department also watched the historic cremation process. Later, they followed the Chinese example and cremated all the infected corpses in the Russian area, whether they had recently died or had already decomposed. In February, Russia burned a total of 1,416 bodies, 1,002 of which were exhumed from graves.

January 31 is the traditional first day of the Chinese New Year, and at this time, 1/4 of the people in Fujiadian have died of plague. On the occasion of the Spring Festival, the epidemic prevention headquarters issued leaflets calling on everyone to set off firecrackers. Wu Liande believes that from a scientific point of view, the sulfur in firecrackers also has the effect of disinfection. On the first day of the Lunar New Year, the death toll in Fujiadian dropped from 183 to 165, "and has since waned" and has never rebounded.

Until midnight on March 1, when reports of zero plague deaths came, the headquarters of the anti-chemical warfare corps in Fujiadian, Harbin, was boiling. A few days later, in view of the zero plague deaths for many consecutive days, the epidemic prevention committee announced the lifting of the quarantine of Fujiadian.

After the plague in Harbin, Zhang Tiande and the anti-chemical warfare battalion moved to Changchun, Shenyang, and other places, and through hard work, by the end of April, all plagues in the three northeastern provinces were eliminated. This is the first time in human history that an operation to successfully control an infectious disease in a densely populated large city has relied on scientific means. Zhang Tiande's fearless spirit and benevolence in treating diseases and saving people gave a very intuitive impression to the people of Northeast China who did not know much about the Wuyi New Army, which also played an important role in the later Northeast Banner.

Wu Chenxuan once commented on the contribution of battalion commander Zhang Tiande, "This is the first time that the Wuyi New Army has measured the size of the battle achievements by the scale of saving people rather than the number of enemies killed, and I hope this will not be the last time, because this kind of success is the precious wealth that our soldiers are more willing to tell our children and grandchildren." ”