Wu Mengchao, the academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and "Father of Chinese Hepatobiliary Surgery", died on May 22 at the age of 99.
Wu Mengchao was born in Minqing County, Fujian Province in 1922. He has cured the sick and saved the patience for 78 years. Even at the age of 90-year-old, he still insisted on working in the front line. Wu Mengchao won the National Highest Science and Technology Award in 2005. He is the pioneer and founder of Hepatobiliary Surgery in China.
He is the first name written on the first line of the first page of Surgery in China. He creatively proposed the "five leaves and four segments" theory and invented the "intermittent hepatectomy at room temperature". In May 2011, the asteroid 17606 was named "Wu Meng Chaoxing". May the suffering souls be illuminated by the stars.
Many medical experts and scholars all over the country have cherished the memory of Academician Wu, recalled the past with him, and mentioned the ways learned from him.
Peng Shuyou (Chinese famous hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery expert, inventor of PMOD series)
Yesterday, the "Peng Jiajun" WeChat group led by Professor Peng Shuyou, the inventor of PMOD, was inundated by the news of the death of Academician Wu Mengchao.
"Sorrowfully mourn the falling of the superstar! Academician Wu will be immortal!" Peng Shuyou wrote in the group, and his students also mourned deeply and cherished the demeanor of Master Wu.
Also as a master in the field of hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery, and at the same old age, Peng Shuyou also still insists on being on the clinical front line of surgery. Peng Shuyou regards Academician Wu, who is just ten years older than him, as a confidant. "The fall of a superstar is a great loss to the people of the whole country, which makes me feel incomparably grieved! To me, he is also a teacher and a friend."
Peng Shuyan and Wu Mengchao attended IHPBA
The friendship between the two experts began in the late 1980s. At that time, Peng Shuyou returned from UK after graduation and met Mr. Wu at an academic conference. "I have read his books before, and witnessed his elegant demeanour at that meeting." Since then, both at domestic and international academic conferences, the two masters often met with and appreciate each other and discuss the most cutting-edge technologies together.
Academician Wu Mengchao founded the Wu's segmentation method of liver, and Peng Shuyou studied and imitated it and created five types of biliary diseases to facilitate the practical application of clinicians. In 1987, he successfully performed the first eighth liver resection in China, which was highly praised by Mr. Wu.
A few years ago, Peng Shuyou was invited to perform a difficult hepatectomy in Germany. At that time, Mr. Wu was visiting in Berlin. After hearing about it, he immediately called to congratulate Mr.Peng.
The last time the two met was at an academic conference two or three years ago. When Mr. Wu came to the stage to give a report, he stepped up two steps and accidentally fell. As the host, Peng Shuyou quickly went up to help.
Peng Shuyou remembered that when the highest science and technology award was selected that year, a judge asked whether Mr. Wu could still perform surgery. "As a reviewer, I said that Mr. Wu is an extraordinary legend. Not only can he go on the operating table, but he also has surgery almost every day, because his main task is to treat patients. In fact, he was 98 years old last year and he had surgery from time to time. He is my role model!"
Encouraged by Mr. Wu, Peng Shuyou is still struggling in the clinical front line in his 90s, often completing difficult operations by himself. When interviewed by a local newspaper, he was attending academic conferences in other places, and he said, "We will always remember Academician Wu, a master of a generation, a arrogance of a generation!"