A modern Chinese revolutionary and a founding figure of the Republic of China. After graduating from the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese in 1892, he was invited to practise at Kiang Wu Hospital in Macau, regarded as the territory’s first Chinese doctor of Western medicine, and opened a Chinese-Western pharmacy. He later devoted himself to revolution, founding the Revive China Society and the Tongmenghui, and in 1912 became provisional president of the Republic of China. Macau was among the important places of his early medical practice and the stirrings of his revolutionary thought.

Before he turned to revolution, he was a Western-medicine doctor at Kiang Wu Hospital in Macau; the scalpel and the pharmacy were among the first steps of his vision to remake a nation.

Sun Yat-sen was a modern Chinese revolutionary and a founding figure of the Republic of China. Between 1892 and 1893 he practised medicine at Kiang Wu Hospital in Macau, regarded as the territory’s first Chinese doctor of Western medicine.

Profile

  • Chinese Name: 孫中山 (given name 文, courtesy name 載之, style name 逸仙)
  • English Name: Sun Yat-sen
  • Born: 12 November 1866 (Cuiheng village, Xiangshan, Guangdong)
  • Died: 12 March 1925 (Beijing)
  • Region: Xiangshan, Guangdong · Hong Kong · Macau · overseas
  • Domains: Politics · Academia (medicine)
  • Subject type: Historical figure · Revolutionary · Physician

Background

Sun Yat-sen was born in Cuiheng village, Xiangshan, Guangdong. As a young man he studied in Honolulu, where he encountered Western culture and institutions. He later trained in Western medicine in Hong Kong, graduating with distinction from the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese in 1892.

Career

I. Medical practice (1892–1893)

In 1892 Sun was invited to practise at Kiang Wu Hospital in Macau, regarded as the hospital’s first Western-medicine doctor and the first Chinese doctor of Western medicine in Macau. He then opened a Chinese-Western pharmacy (孫醫館) in the territory, treating patients and dispensing medicine, and was praised in the press for his skill and conduct. From about 1893 he moved on to practise in the Guangzhou area.

II. Revolutionary career

Alongside his medical work, Sun grew increasingly concerned with the state of the nation. In 1894, after his petition to the official Li Hongzhang went unanswered, he travelled to Honolulu and founded the Revive China Society under the call to “rejuvenate China”. In 1905, in Japan, he united several revolutionary groups into the Tongmenghui and set out his Three Principles of the People: nationalism, democracy and the people’s livelihood.