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Source: "From 'Hospital for Overlords' to Hospital of the Labouring People," Beijing Review 14, no. 5, 29 January 1971, 14-16.
Transcribed by an HC, April 18, 2005
January 29, 1971
Led by the workers' and P.L.A. men's Mao Tsetung Thought propaganda team, medical personnel of the Peking Fanhsiu (anti-revisionist) Hospital have made vigorous efforts in smashing the revisionist line in medical and health work and in firmly implementing Chairman Mao's proletarian line in medical and health work. By wholeheartedly serving the workers, peasants and soldiers, they have fundamentally changed the hospital's political orientation.
This large polyclinic hospital has modern equipment and a fairly skilled staff. Before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, they had made some achievements in raising their skills and in medical research and preventive medicine under the guidance of Chairman Mao's revolutionary line. But in those days the handful of capitalist roaders in the hospital pushed Liu Shao-chi's revisionist line in medical and health work and advocated the slavish comprador philosophy. For the hospital's main task, they set the dissemination of foreign medical "experience." Most things in the hospital, from the administrative system to methods of treatment, were copied from abroad. The medical staff was confined to the hospital, becoming divorced from China's reality and burying themselves in foreign medical literature. They blindly followed foreign therapeutic methods and procedures. Surgeons, for example, [p. 15] were bent on becoming more skilled in operating on patients with congenital heart disease, studying the techniques of capitalist countries, although they seldom had such cases in China. They paid far less attention to treatment and study of the common diseases they encountered in clinical work. While the internal medicine department devoted considerable manpower and money to methods of laboratory diagnosis of some uncommon diseases, there was little interest in treating common diseases and in emergency treatment of serious cases.
With Mao Tsetung Thought as their weapon, the hospital staff, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, sharply criticized Liu Shao-chi's revisionist line and shifted their stand to wholehearted service for the working people.
They have acted in accordance with Chairman Mao's instruction: "In medical and health work, put the stress on the rural areas." Ten groups have been sent to the rural areas in the past few years, providing mobile medical service or settling in the countryside to be re-educated by the poor and lower-middle peasants while giving them medical attention. Last year teams were organized to give mobile services to the working people in factories and residential areas.
To implement Chairman Mao's policy "Put prevention first," the hospital sent out its staff to help communes, factories and residential areas train several thousand junior medical workers. They spread knowledge about hygiene and helped initiate mass health campaigns that have greatly cut the incidence of infectious diseases. They helped units at the grass-roots set up medical and health networks to serve the working people promptly in villages and factories.
Led by the workers' and P.L.A. men's Mao Tsetung Thought propaganda team and the hospital revolutionary committee, the hospital staff has made energetic efforts to study and apply the brilliant "three constantly read articles" by Chairman Mao in a living way, remould its members' world outlook and foster the concept of serving the people heart and soul. They have revolutionized their work by first revolutionizing their thinking. Breaking with foreign dogmas which do not conform with China's reality and with the needs of the workers and peasants uppermost in mind, they have constantly improved their service and solved problems in the prevention and treatment of many common diseases and occupational diseases. They have also overcome every difficulty in raising their technical level. As a result, many class brothers and sisters afflicted with diseases bourgeois medical "authorities" claimed "incurable" have been helped.
It was found in 1965 that Shih Cheng-hsiang, a commune member in a Peking suburb, had a malignant abdominal tumour as big as a bowl. She went to this hospital three times, only to be refused treatment because her disease was said to be "incurable." Her condition deteriorated. After the workers' and P.L.A. men's Mao Tsetung Thought propaganda team entered the hospital, a mobile service team sent by the hospital to the village heard of the case. Very angry at Liu Shao-chi's revisionist line in medical and health work, the team brought the patient back to the hospital on its own initiative. With profound proletarian feelings, the medical workers pooled their wisdom and in a difficult six-hour operation, removed a malignant 10-kilogramme ovarian tumour and more than 30 meta-static tumours. The patient was eventually restored to good health and went back to work.
A primary school pupil came to the hospital's surgery one day to have a small tumour on his foot removed. The pathological report three days after the operation stated that the tumour was malignant and required further treatment. But the patient did not return for a check-up and did not leave any address. The doctors and nurses in the out-patient department went to more than 100 primary schools looking for the patient and finally found the pupil's brother. The pathological report was forwarded to the parents and the patient was asked to come in for treatment. Deeply moved, the father who was a worker expressed his gratitude for the Party and Chairman Mao.
Treating burns in capitalist countries is regarded as unprofitable and troublesome. The influence of the revisionist line was such that before the Great Cultural Revolution the hospital paid no attention to burns and did no significant research in this field. Patients with burns exceeding 30 per cent of the body surface were referred to other hospitals on the excuse that there were no burn wards.
In the past two years during the Cultural Revolution, it has saved patients with large areas of burns. Transport worker Wang You-hsiang of the Tientsin No. 5 Dyeing and Chemical Works received sulphuric acid burns when a pottery container broke. The burn area covered 78.5 per cent of his body surface and he was in a coma when he arrived at the hospital. An emergency group was immediately set up and the hospital called on the whole staff to pitch in. In handling the case, in line with Chairman Mao's teaching "Man has constantly to sum up experience and go on discovering, inventing, creating and advancing," the group drew lessons from past experience and learnt from the advanced experience of other hospitals. It boldly broke the old rule that no more than 5 to 15 per cent of the eschars can be removed at one time, and removed extensive eschars to do skin grafts at an early stage. The group performed four operations within eight days to control bacterial infection by reducing the wound surface. The patient came out of his coma and got over the dangerous period of possible septicemia from bacterial infection. He was brought back from the edge of death.
Electric ophthalmia is a common occupational disease of workers doing electric welding. Instead of paying attention to this, the revisionist line in medical research diverted the hospital to the study of "high-level, difficult" cases. Thus it did no effective preventive work against the disease. During the Great Cul-¬tural [p. 16] Revolution, the medical workers at the hospital went to factories where they were re-educated by the workers. Working with them, they learnt first-hand how the disease torments people. They made a joint study of the disease with factory medical workers and found ways to prevent it.
An advanced malignant tumour is generally regarded as "incurable." Many surgeons shrink from such operations because the mortality rate is high. The hospital refused to take in any patient thus diagnosed. However, in the last two years, the medical workers have firmly put into practice Chairman Mao's teaching "Heal the wounded, rescue the dying, practise revolutionary humanitarianism." They have done many successful operations of this kind and the patients have returned to work after they recovered. A striking instance is that of several young surgeons who, under the guidance of Mao Tsetung Thought, performed a successful operation on lower-middle peasant Tan Kuo-chun who had a malignant tumour on the middle lobe of the liver. The original plan was to remove the lobe. But when the abdomen was opened, they found the case far more serious than expected. As big as a human head, the tumour was on the middle lobe but athwart both the left and right lobes, with criss-crossed blood vessels that bled freely. The surgeons had never faced such complications and feared that the patient might die of excessive bleeding on the operating table. What was to be done? They remembered Chairman Mao's great teaching "Serve the people whole-heartedly" and realized that the key to removing the tumour was not their technique, but primarily whether they would put Mao Tsetung Thought in command of their action. No bourgeois "authorities" would operate on a patient like Tan. Since their technique must serve the workers, peasants and soldiers, the young surgeons decided they would do everything they could to save this class brother so long as there was a glimmer of hope. They took many measures to ensure the patient's life while removing the three-kilogramme malignant tumour in a tense nine-hour operation. The patient recovered one month later.
Although the hospital buildings and equipment are no different than before, tremendous changes have taken place in the mental outlook of its medical staff since the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution began. Its members are armed with Mao Tsetung Thought and the orientation of the hospital has been fundamentally changed. Once known as a "hospital for overlords," it is now praised by the revolutionary masses as a "hospital of the labouring people."