Tu Tsung-ming


Tu Tsung-ming was a Taiwanese pharmacologist and educator who was the first Taiwanese person to earn a Doctor of Medical Sciences.

Early life and education

Tu Tsung-ming was born in Tamsui in 1893. He entered Taihoku Imperial University in 1909; because he scored highly on the medical entrance exam, the president of the school, Junzo Nagano, decided to admit him as a special case.
The movement that requested to overthrow China's Qing dynasty was rising in 1910, and he joined the under society Tongmenghui with his friends. In 1913, Tu participated in a failed assassination attempt on Yuan Shikai.
In 1914, he graduated the from the medical school at the head of his year.
After graduation, he entered Kyoto Imperial University under the support of Tugio Horiuchi, the president of the Medical school in 1922. He majored in internal medicine and pharmacology there. He became a member of Kuomintang in 1916.

Medical career

In 1921, he came back to Taiwan and started working as a lecturer in the Medical school under Government-General of Taiwan. He submitted his doctoral dissertation to Kyoto Imperial University in 1922, and became a Doctor of Medical Sciences. He was promoted to professor at the Medical school in the same year, and he was the first Taiwanese professor in Japan's pre-1945 imperial university system, at Taihoku Imperial University. His pharmacology research lab was the cradle of medical research in Taiwan. The laboratory did pioneering research on methods to treat opium addiction, on the toxicology of snake venom, and on the pharmacology of traditional Chinese medicine.
In addition to participating in pharmacological and toxicological research, Tu also contributed to medical education. After the World War II, he was the first dean of the National Taiwan University Medical College. In 1954, Tu founded Kaohsiung Medical College and became the first president of the College.

Relatives