<previous    next>    view    play    stop

WEN-HSIEN WU, MD

Family and Professional Achievement

Family Background

Wen-hsien Wu was born into a family with generations of scholars and achievers. His grandfather was a combined product of Chinese classical and western education, holding both a Hanlin degree from the Chinese court and a graduate degree in finance from the University of Wisconsin. After returning from the United States, he was involved in the setting up of early Chinese banking and currency systems. Both Wen-hsien’s parents went to the United States for advanced studies on the merit of Gengzi Indemnity Scholarships. His father studied sugar refining in Ohio and Louisiana. He was one of the pioneers in Chinese sugar refining industry and in sugar-cane cultivation. His mother graduated from Radcliff College and held teaching positions upon her return. It was said that her family descended from Bigan, the royal censor of Shang Dynasty. Many of her contemporaries became elected members of Academia Sinica. A cousin of hers was a builder of the first Chinese airplane during the War against Japan (1937-45). A brother was the world-renown T. Y. Lin who introduced pre-stressed concrete into Civil Engineering and revolutionized bridge building. Among her relatives, there were numerous professors teaching and serving in all parts of the world.

Childhood and Youth

Wen-hsien Wu was born in 1933 in Shanghai, China. At the age of five he started a fugitive life from the invading Japanese forces. He was lucky to have escaped the 1938 Nanjing Massacre. During his flight, he and his family passed through Jiangxi, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Guizhou and finally arrived at Sichuan. The brutality and suffering he witnessed during this journey marked his childhood and youth.

In 1944 he started school at Nankai Middle School in the city of Chongqing. In 1945, when WWII was over, he returned to Shanghai to enter Nanyang Mofan Middle School, then Shanghai Provincial Middle School. In 1948, when war broke out between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists, Wen-hsien went from Shanghai to Taiwan to be with his parents. There, he graduated from the Middle School of Taiwan Teachers’ College.

In 1951 Wen-hsien entered the National Taiwan University’s Medical School. Upon his graduation and the completion of an air force reserve training, he enrolled in Creighton University (Nebraska) on a scholarship to study physiology and pharmacology. In 1961 he graduated with honor and was retained by the university for teaching duties.

Career in Medicine

In 1964 Wen-hsien went to Philadelphia to receive his training in clinical medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. After completing his anesthesiology residency in 1967, he won a fellowship from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to do research. This research led to his development in 1998 of a new method (radio immunoassay) to measure nanogram quantities of the posterior pituitary hormone. The method speeds up the understanding in this field. In 1969 he joined the faculty of Temple University Medical School where he established the Intensive Care Unit and Respiratory Therapy Department. In 1971 he moved to the Department of Anesthesiology West Virginia University Medical School as an Assistant Professor. During this tenure, he created a statewide Intensive Care Center receiving critical patients from all over the state. He published many articles establishing care standards that significantly improved the survival rate of patients. They became one of the models in the United States.

In 1974 he moved to New York University Medical School as a tenured professor. In 1977 he was promoted to be the chief of the Department of Anesthesiology, Veteran’s Hospital, Manhattan where he continued to pursue clinical, teaching and research work. He also established the Anesthesiology Research Laboratory supported by NIH funding. His many new discoveries were published in professional journals.

In 1979 he moved to University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey as a tenured professor and chairman of Anesthesiology and Pharmacology. In 1981 he established one of the few front-running independent interdisciplinary pain management centers in US. He initiated the use of computerized intravenous and epidural drug delivery systems to control postoperative, cancer and untreatable non-cancer chronic pain. This approach significantly reduced postoperative complication and morbidity of the other group. He also introduced acupuncture and Ne-He laser irradiation to produce analgesia. He was the sole recipient of a NIH grant to study the relationship between external Qigong and pain and confirmed that Qigong could produce short-term analgesia and longer-term antidepressant effects. Three years in a row (2001, ’02, ’03) he was named to be among The Best Pain Doctors in Greater New York Area.

Over the course of his medical career, he published 73 scientific papers, 12 books and book chapters, 68 abstracts. He also organized 15 scientific meetings and edited their proceedings. Between 1989 and l998 he systematically introduced Pain Medicine to the medical professionals in People’s Republic of China and Taiwan.

After his retirement in 2005, he devoted all his time and energy to the pursuit of a life in art.