Yan Renying was born in a large family in Tianjin in 1913. His grandfather Yan Xiu was a famous educator in modern times. He served as the minister of academic affairs and academic department in Guizhou. Together with Zhang Boling, he co-founded the Nankai University series. The school is known as the "Father of Nankai School". Because she is the fourth child, her family affectionately calls Yan Renying "Fourth Sister".
Yan Renying grew up in a deep house and compound. She never left home before the age of 12. According to her own words, “So she was always a little wild and wanted to run out.”
Perhaps she has longed for the sky outside since she was a child, or perhaps she was inspired by Zhang Boling’s famous saying, “Only students who can play can study.” During her five years at Nankai Girls’ High School, Yan Renying became a fun-loving and playful person. happy girl. At that time, she was tall, lively and active, and became a core member of the school basketball and volleyball teams.
Drama has always been an enduring tradition of Nankai School. At that time, Zhou Enlai and Cao Yu were both influential figures in the Nankai Repertory Theater. Yan Renying was also eager to give it a try. She teamed up with her classmates Deng Wanye and Tao Baosheng to put the story of the patriotic general Guo Songling in the Northeast on the stage. She wrote and acted in it and named the play "Anyway". The protagonist, General Guo Songling, was naturally played by the tall Yan Renying.
Although it was her first time acting, Yan Renying was calm and composed and spoke clearly. Especially after she said a sonorous and powerful statement, "I, Guo Songling, officially announce the revolt!", the audience burst into applause. Although this girl is very playful and even slightly naughty, her academic performance has always been among the top three in the school.
In 1918, Yan Renying's father died of illness in a foreign land. While his grandfather Yan Xiu was grieving, he devoted all his love to Yan Renying's brother and sister who lost their father at a young age. His grandfather's emphasis on education and scientific methods allowed them to win. Very beneficial.
Brother and sister Yan Renying are also very ambitious. They study hard, serve their elders, and have been self-reliant since they were young. In the third year of junior high school, her grandfather Yan Xiu, who had been suffering from tumors for many years, also passed away due to illness. Yan Renying fell into deep grief. The Yan family never had a doctor, and every time they got sick, the whole family was almost at a loss. "Especially my third brother, who got tuberculosis a long time ago and had to drop out of school to recuperate at home. In order to take care of my third brother, my mother paid a lot. So. I have long wanted to be a doctor, and my first wish to be a doctor was to be able to treat my family members.”
In 1932, Yan Renying was successfully admitted to the Department of Biology of Tsinghua University and took an elective course in Peking. The compulsory preparatory course for Peking Union Medical College officially opens the way to a life of treating diseases and saving lives. In 1935, Yan Renying got her wish and was admitted to Peking Union Medical College, and won a scholarship from Peking Union Medical College with outstanding results in the top three.
Beiping Union Medical College has always been known for its high-standard training of "less but better". Therefore, Union Medical College students have very strict requirements and study extremely intensely. Lin Qiaozhi recalled when she was studying that year: "As soon as school started, I was almost isolated from the rest of the world and dived into studying." Wu Jieping, who later graduated from Yan Renying, will never forget the "non-negotiable" "elimination system" of the old Union.
With the good habits developed in Nankai and Tsinghua University, Yan Renying is still lively, relaxed and helpful. It was also during his days at Xiehe that Yan Renying met his classmate Wang Guangchao. The two energetic young people established their lifelong relationship here.
The Union Medical College requires every student to take turns to practice in various departments. To this end, Yan Renying came to the Obstetrics Department of the Union Hospital, where she met the famous obstetrics and gynecology expert Professor Lin Qiaozhi for the first time. Lin Qiaozhi is the sixth graduate of Peking Union Medical College who graduated in 1929. She is also the first Chinese director of obstetrics and gynecology at Union Hospital. She has personally delivered more than 50,000 babies and is known as the "Mother of Ten Thousand Babies." .
In the eyes of Yan Renying, who is new to the hospital, Dr. Lin Qiaozhi is quite a "magic".
Yan Renying recalled: “When I was a trainee doctor, I was wondering why the mother was moaning and groaning there, but there was no sound as soon as Dr. Lin came. She sat next to the mother, Use your hand to touch her belly, listen to the fetal heart rate, feel the uterine contractions, and then tell her how you are now and why your stomach hurts now. The baby is about to come out, and you have to make way for him to come out. Once the path was cleared, the baby was ready. The mother took Dr. Lin's hand and she became quiet and stopped yelling. So in my impression, I think Dr. Lin is really a good doctor. The patients in the outpatient clinic and the ward are so serious, responsible and patient. In addition to treating her illness, they also help her solve her heart problems.
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Under the guidance of her mentor Lin Qiaozhi, Yan Renying chose the major of obstetrics and gynecology and stayed at Union Medical College as a resident doctor. She liked this major very much because in the mind of this young intern, obstetrics is “a "One person enters the hospital and two people are discharged from the hospital." "One person comes and two people leave. Both the mother and the child were happy when they left. This made me feel happy." ”
After working for more than a year, Yan Renying was hesitating whether to be like Lin Qiaozhi, not to get married, and step by step to be promoted from resident doctor to chief resident physician, lecturer, associate professor, and professor (Lao Xiehe believed that women got married. After the end of her career, she could only go to the outpatient clinic), the Pearl Harbor incident broke out, and Union Hospital was forced to close.
After Union Hospital was closed, Lin Qiaozhi declined the invitation from her colleagues to go to the United States and opened a hospital in Dongtangzi Hutong, Beijing. The "Lin Qiaozhi Clinic" was established, and under Lin Qiaozhi's arrangement, Yan Renying came to the Maternity Hospital Affiliated to the National First Midwifery School founded by Dr. Yang Chongrui, and came into contact with another person who had made outstanding contributions to China's maternal and child health. Famous obstetrics and gynecology expert - Yang Chongrui.
China's first female doctor of medicine, Yang Chongrui, was not only an obstetrics and gynecology expert, but also a medical educator. She actively participated in groups that were not valued at the time. In the cause of health care, many midwifery schools were established successively and overcame many difficulties, setting off a revolution in new midwifery methods in old China. What is even more admirable is that as early as the 1930s, Yang Chongrui proposed "limiting the population." ", improve the quality of the population" and established a "Birth Control Guidance Center".
In Yang Chongrui's birth control guidance center, Yan Renying saw a scene that she will never forget: the doctors were almost using the word "begging" He said, "begging" the patients to take contraceptive measures, telling them why they should take contraceptive measures and how to take them.
Yan Renying was shocked. How different it was from sitting in the clinic waiting for patients to come to their door! Right next to Yang Chongrui, Yan Renying began to realize the significance of "prevention" and "health care". In July 1942, Yan Renying resigned from the National First Midwifery. She married Wang Guangchao while working at the school and became a doctor at the "Dr. Wang Guangchao Clinic", but she soon discovered that her husband's clinic was a bit "mysterious". The secret contact point of the **Beiping underground party is responsible for the arduous task of secretly transporting medicines and supplies to the Anti-Japanese Base Area.
The clinic is an important channel for supplies from the city to the Pingxi Anti-Japanese Base Area. Yan Renying bravely cooperates with her husband. "This secret operation lasted for two years. We were never afraid of delivering medicine to the base area. ”
In the summer of 1945, Japan surrendered, and the city of Beiping was in ruins. Due to the withdrawal of the Japanese, the teaching of Peking University School of Medicine came to a standstill, and Yan Renying was invited to teach obstetrics and gynecology at Peking University School of Medicine.
Hu Yamei, a student at that time, recalled: “At that time, our obstetrics and gynecology course was taught by teacher Lin Qiaozhi. Of course, Ms. Lin is a knowledgeable and experienced professor, but her Mandarin is not very fluent. She often mixes English with Hokkien during her lectures, which makes it difficult for students to understand the course content. After getting the consent of Teacher Lin, our senior monitor invited her most popular student, Teacher Yan Renying, to teach us obstetrics and gynecology courses. Teacher Yan’s lectures are clear and closely integrated with clinical practice. He is very popular with us. ”
In 1946, Peking University was re-established and Peking University School of Medicine was merged into Peking University. Peking University Hospital reopened and immediately invited members from various disciplines from the original Union Medical College, such as Wu Chaoren and Wang Shuxian from the Department of Internal Medicine, and Department of Surgery. Guan Songtao, Wang Datong, pediatrician Zhu Futang, ophthalmologist Bihuade, otologist Zhang Qingsong, dermatologist Hu Chuankui, etc. Yan Renying's mentor Lin Qiaozhi, director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Union Medical College Hospital, was naturally among them.
, since most of these professors held multiple positions, they recruited former students from Peking Union Medical College to be chief residents, including Deng Qingzeng from Internal Medicine, Wu Jieping from Surgery, Zhao Xizhi from Pediatrics, etc. Lin Qiaozhi was naturally the best candidate. Yan Renying.
In this way, Yan Renying returned to Lin Qiaozhi again.
In the autumn of 1948, with the help of various parties and Lin Qiaozhi, Yan Renying went to the Columbia University School of Medicine to study for a lifetime. While Yan Renying and his wife were studying hard in the United States, news of the People's Liberation Army's victories came from the other side of the ocean.
A year later, Yan Renying and his wife, eager to return home, together with many aspiring young people, broke through the persuasion and obstruction from the United States and resolutely embarked on a journey back to China.
Yan Renying and his wife boarded a passenger ship from San Francisco to Hong Kong. On the same boat were old classmates Liang Siyi and his wife, his brother Liang Sili, as well as a group of young international students who were full of vigor and cared about the motherland, such as Fan Shaoquan and Liu Chuanyan.
Liang Sili, who had studied radio in the United States and worked as a radio host, brought an HP radio with him and immediately became the focus of this group of young people eager to learn about the motherland. One day, the news came from the radio that New China was about to be founded on October 1. Yan Renying and others were extremely excited and started a celebration on the deck: "According to the new national flag, it is red, with a large yellow five-pointed star and four small yellow five-pointed stars. I found a piece of white cloth and dyed it with red ink. We turned it into red, cut out five five-pointed stars from yellow paper, and placed a small star around each one. In this way, we sang ("The Sky in the Liberated Area", etc.), danced and celebrated on the deck. It was only in Beijing that I discovered that the flag was not made correctly, but unfortunately I did not keep it as a souvenir when I got off the ship.”
According to Yan Renying’s own words, after returning to China, she did a series of “irrelevant” things. The first step is to examine the prostitute's body.
On the night of November 21, 1949, Nie Rongzhen, the then mayor of Beijing, issued an order to close down 224 brothels in eight alleys in Beijing, housing 1,286 prostitutes. Prostitution officially became history in New China. As an expert in obstetrics and gynecology, Yan Renying followed the medical team to treat prostitutes in the correctional facility for four months. Yan Renying regarded them as his sisters, and did not discriminate or dislike them. With his noble medical ethics and medical style, he influenced the nursing students, and he himself also received a profound "class education lesson."
The next step was to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea. In 1951, Yan Renying followed the condolence delegation led by Li Dequan to North Korea to visit the volunteers. During this period, they discovered the vicious behavior of the US military air-dropping biological and chemical weapons. Therefore, Yan Renying went to North Korea twice in March and July 1952, accompanying domestic groups and investigation teams from seven countries including Britain, France, and Italy to investigate the germ warfare launched by the United States.
In the Korean battlefield where artillery fire was raging, Yan Renying and others braved the risk of bombing by US military aircraft and rushed to the forward position. They had two brushes with death and collected a large amount of incriminating evidence. In the following four years, Yan Renying participated in many exhibitions about the crimes of U.S. germ warfare. At the 1953 exhibition in Berlin, Germany, she used fluent English and detailed information to tell visitors about the crimes of the U.S. military. These materials later It has been compiled and published in four languages: Chinese, English, French and Russian.
In 1953, Yan Renying was invited to accompany Comrade Kang Keqing to Copenhagen to attend the Third International Democratic Women's Federation Conference. From then on, "the development of the situation became even more uncontrollable" and various foreign affairs activities followed one after another.
In 1958, as one of the five observers, Yan Renying represented China at the Asian-African Women's Conference held in Colombo; in 1961, she participated in a visit to Japan by a Chinese women's delegation headed by Xu Guangping; in 1964, Participated in the visit of the China-Albania Friendship Delegation headed by Jiang Nanxiang to Albania; in 1979, participated in the visit of the Chinese women's delegation headed by Huang Ganying to the United States, and visited the United States many times since then; in 1988, participated in the visit of the National People's Congress delegation UK etc.
Although it takes up a lot of business and family time, Yan Renying has no regrets about her "non-professional" work. She obeys the organization's arrangements and voluntarily takes on the logistics work of taking care of the entire team every time she visits. , and arrange everything in order.
Yan Renying has an elegant temperament and fluent English. She is often regarded as the "image ambassador" of Chinese women. In this regard, her heart is filled with the pride of sharing the fate of the motherland, "I am tall, good at English, in good health, and my feet are not bound. When I go out and people look at me as a 'stupid', I look like a living person." What a good role model for women in New China! People will feel that Chinese women are liberated, really liberated." After returning to China, Yan Renying briefly served as the principal of Beijing No. 1 Midwifery School, and then returned to Peking University Hospital to become a maternity woman. Director of Obstetrics. Although she was engaged in "a sweet career where one person enters the hospital and two people are discharged", Yan Renying experienced the hardship and bitterness of this career very early:
"I remember when I first arrived at Peking University Hospital in 1946 While I was working, the hospital's obstetrics ward was filled with patients who were either endangered or whose babies had died, a situation that was common at the time.
The incidence of dystocia among the women admitted at that time was particularly high. I once saw a rural woman with dystocia. When her family carried her to the hospital using a door panel, one of the child's hands had already come out. In that case, the role that doctors can play is actually very small. ”
Faced with these tragic situations, Yan Renying began to reflect on the limitations of clinical medicine. In the 1950s, while participating in the Beijing Women’s Health Survey, she realized that early detection of gynecological tumors could be achieved without feeling sick. , it is easy to eradicate the disease. On the contrary, many patients with advanced cervical cancer who go to outpatient clinics are mostly unable to save themselves.
Yan Renying began to realize that medical treatment can only save one person, but prevention can bring benefits. A large group of people.
What really made Yan Renying decide to switch from clinical practice to health care was the inspiration of senior Yang Chongrui when he was working at the National No. 1 Midwifery School. Yan Renying admired Yang Chongrui for transforming and training old midwives. A pioneering work by midwives, which greatly reduced maternal and neonatal mortality across the country.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Yang Chongrui followed Yan Renying's persuasion and returned to China, becoming the director of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the Ministry of Health. Member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. The two had many contacts, and Yang Chongrui's educational goals and personal code of conduct of "sacrifice for the benefit of the people" deeply influenced her, following in Yang Chongrui's footsteps, Yan Renying embarked on the path of women's health care.
Once, the CPPCC discussed the issue of legalizing abortion. Yan Renying and Yang Chongrui both expressed opposition. They were afraid that if abortion was legal, people would pay less attention to contraception. Later, they learned that because Without the legal help of artificial abortion, some women suffer from illegal methods such as "three-stage injection". Failure to achieve abortion can lead to urinary fistula and other disabilities, and even death.
Yan Renying reflected on her naive and purely technical views that were divorced from the masses, and put forward the idea of ??"one foot among the masses". It was under the guidance of this idea that she began to explore the road to health care < /p>
In the mid-1960s, Mao Zedong proposed that "the focus of medical and health work should be placed in rural areas." Yan Renying led experts from various disciplines to Miyun County, a suburb of Beijing, and held "half-agricultural, half-medical" study classes. While treating some women's diseases, she traveled almost all over Miyun Reservoir. She deeply realized the lack of medical treatment and the poor health conditions of rural women.
Unfortunately, with the beginning of the "Cultural Revolution", This meaningful activity was interrupted.
Yan Renying and his wife did not escape the impact of the "Cultural Revolution", and Yan Renying was demoted to a hygienist, regardless of whether he was carrying a stretcher or cleaning the toilet. Yan Renying still treats others with tolerance and sincerity, and treats her work meticulously.
After the "Cultural Revolution" ended, she finally ushered in a new life. In order to make abortion cause less harm, she began to propose "non-surgical termination." "Pregnancy" idea, and took the lead in setting up a family planning laboratory in the hospital to start research on medical abortion.
The initial work could only be done through hard work. In order to fight progesterone and promote uterine contraction, "I heard that there is a mountain in Xinjiang Plant a plant called snow lotus. That plant melts the snow around it. They say it is a 'heat-type' plant. Can you try using it? So we got some snow lotus and tested it with a small mouse in the laboratory. Later, Yan Renying and others developed practical methods of terminating pregnancy with prostaglandins and traditional Chinese medicine Andrographis paniculata and other herbal medicines, and then researched and developed new drugs, finally finding a way to prevent early pregnancy and non-surgical termination of pregnancy.
Now, this The research has been used in clinical practice, bringing good news to women.
In 1979, Yan Renying visited the United States with a Chinese women's delegation headed by Huang Ganying. During this period, she came into contact with the growing epidemic abroad. Obstetric medicine. Recalling the limitations and lessons of her decades of clinical work in obstetrics and gynecology, and the path taken by her mentors Lin Qiaozhi and Yang Chongrui, Yan Renying was deeply inspired and determined to introduce "perinatal health care" to China.
After returning to China, the first thing Yan Renying did was to establish the "eugenics health care group" of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Peking University No. 1 Hospital and start studying perinatal medicine.
In the past, the first prenatal diagnosis for pregnant women was 7 months into pregnancy. Menstruation has just begun. Yan Renying believes that prenatal check-ups should start from the early stages of pregnancy and insist on regular check-ups to achieve early check-up, early diagnosis, and early health care to ensure the safety of mother and child.
Therefore, she led the eugenics health care team to establish an early pregnancy clinic, and then organized a school for pregnant women, providing services to nearly a thousand pregnant women every day and providing comprehensive guidance on the physical and psychological problems of pregnant women. Many pregnant women came to attend the class with their husbands, mother-in-law and their whole family. .
Nowadays, early pregnancy clinics, pregnant women’s schools, and perinatal health care have long been known to everyone. This was Yan Renying’s earliest contribution to my country’s work on reducing births and eugenics.
To do eugenic health care, you first need a lot of research. Yan Renying chose the Shunyi countryside on the outskirts of Beijing, which was economically underdeveloped at the time and had a high perinatal mortality rate, as a pilot project. He began to monitor and observe maternal and perinatal mortality rates from 1981 to 1982, and promoted "high-risk management" of perinatal health care. measure.
No funds? Yan Renying took out her own "consultant fee" to pay for it; no patients? Yan Renying led everyone to go door to door to "find patients"; is there an urgent need for manpower? Yan Renying volunteered to provide training to medical staff at the village and township levels in Shunyi to improve their ability to identify high-risk factors, handle high-risk pregnancy, delivery, and rescue newborns.
For more than three years, they visited seven townships in Shunyi and investigated more than 2,000 babies, finally reducing the perinatal mortality rate from 27‰ to 17.6‰. Yan Renying's pilot research results on "Perinatal Health High-Risk Management" were quickly praised by the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health. The WHO has continuously funded China to hold three national perinatal health high-risk management classes to integrate the high-risk management of perinatal health. The technology was promoted nationwide and the book "Perinatal Health Care High-Risk Management" was published.
Since then, Yan Renying has taken up the banner of perinatal health care in China and taken the first successful step.
Since then, Yan Renying and her team have successively carried out surveys on "social factors causing maternal deaths" in rural areas across the country, carried out research on the psychology of pregnant women, especially postpartum depression, and expanded perinatal care from medicine to society. science and psychology; jointly carried out research on the prevention and treatment of "neural tube defects" with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and made women's folic acid supplementation to prevent neural tube defects a national action, which has reduced the incidence of neural tube defects in children in my country on the original basis. 50%.
In addition, Yan Renying also established the Chinese Society of Perinatal Medicine, founded the "Chinese Journal of Perinatal Medicine", built the Peking University Women's and Children's Center building, and promoted the "three-level management network" of perinatal health care in rural areas across the country. With the transformation of the medical model, perinatal and reproductive health care have expanded to all age groups and multidisciplinary fields.