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Chung Yik Wang
(1888 - 1930)
College Role:
Fellow
Image credit: Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences Society
Early Life and Education
Chung Yik Wang was born in Hong Kong in 1888, during the last years of the Qing dynasty in China. He showed an aptitude for learning from a young age, and attended Queen's College and the Hong Kong College of Medicine (HKCM) for his secondary schooling. However, the license he received from HKCM was not recognised by the General Medical Council, making him ineligible for medical registration in Hong Kong. Therefore, he decided to obtain a qualification from abroad. While three of his brothers were already studying and living in Europe, Wang was the first HKCM graduate to ever do so. In 1908, he arrived in Scotland to attend the University of Edinburgh, where he would graduate MB, ChB in 1910 after only two years of study. He went on to receive the Edinburgh Diploma of Tropical Health and Hygiene in 1911, the Diploma of Public Health at Manchester in 1912, and a BSc in Bacteriology and Comparative Pathology at Manchester in 1913.
In November 1913, Wang first began working as a laboratory researcher for the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) library. He would remain in Edinburgh for the next 6 years, engaging in tuberculosis research, supported by a McGunn Research Scholarship, Carnegie Research Fellowship, and Freeland Barbour Fellowship. From 1913 to 1916, he studied tuberculosis in the Scottish population and published his thesis: A study in some phases of tuberculosis, with special reference to the incidence of bovine infection and the question of latency and prevalence of the disease. For this project, he was awarded the MD with a gold medal from the University of Edinburgh.
In 1917, the Assistant Superintendent of the laboratory, Dr McGowan, was selected for military duty and the Laboratory Committee appointed Wang as the interim replacement. He spent the next three years in this role, overseeing the general running of the laboratory, supervising public health investigations, reporting on specimens submitted for clinical diagnosis, and continuing his personal tuberculosis research. RCPE 's Reports from the Laboratory, 1915-1920 was full of his publications on tuberculosis, clinical pathology testing, public health, and laboratory work.
Return to Hong Kong
In 1919, the University of Hong Kong began looking for someone to fill their Chair of Pathology and asked Edinburgh for a recommendation. Unsurprisingly, Wang was recommended as an excellent candidate, and he applied for the position. However, the London Consulting Committee, in charge of making the appointment, decided they did not want to hire a Chinese person. A less qualified non-Chinese candidate was offered the Chair instead. When the University of Hong Kong Council found out, they refused to endorse the recommendation.
Fortunately, the impasse was resolved when the first applicant resigned and Wang was finally offered the appointment. He left Edinburgh in early 1920 to return to Hong Kong, but not before becoming a Fellow of the RCPE and marrying the daughter of an Edinburgh businessman, Florence Folkard.
For the next ten years, Wang would serve as the pathology chair of the college from which he'd graduated twelve years prior. He essentially had to build his department from scratch, as the School of Pathology had only been opened shortly before his arrival. He was also selected as the Honorary Consultant in Pathology to the Hong Kong Government, responsible for reporting on clinical specimens and conducting post-mortem examinations. As if that wasn't enough, he even served as the acting Government Bacteriologist from 1921-1922 when the incumbent had to return to England due to ill health. In this role, he was in charge of the production of vaccines and surveillance of infectious diseases for the whole of Hong Kong. At the time, it was virtually unheard of for a Chinese person to be appointed to a senior position in the Hong Kong Government. Clearly, Wang was held in extremely high regard in the medical field.
On top of his governmental duties, Wang also taught classes at the university and built a pathology museum. For his pathology classes, he published a student textbook titled Handbook of Pathology in 1925. For the museum, he collected microscopic specimens that were unfortunately destroyed during the Japanese occupation of 1941-45. In 1929, he was nominated as a member of the Founding Committee of the Chinese Society of Microbiology in Peiping (modern-day Beijing), which only had two other members.
Unfortunately, in 1930, Wang contracted tuberculosis. In a cruel twist of fate, he succumbed to the disease that he dedicated his life to studying. Despite being ordered to rest, he continued lecturing and working until the very end. Even when the tuberculosis had affected his larynx and rendered him unable to lecture, he wrote down his lectures for his assistant to read out to the class. Wang was buried at Pokfulam Cemetery on 15 December 1930. He left behind a legacy of being one of the top medical specialists in the entire country. His two sons followed in his footsteps by graduating from the University of Edinburgh, one in medicine and the other in chemistry. The medical graduate, Dr Ian Wang, also became a Fellow of the RCPE.
