Li Jieshou

Li Jieshou was a Chinese surgeon, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He was born in Liuyang County, Hunan, on 13 September 1924, to Li Putang, a teacher, and Zhou Xia, a housewife. He was the second of five children. Both his elder brother Li Ao and younger brother Li Leishi were also academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. His family moved to Shanghai in 1931, where he studied at Pushi Road Primary School. In 1933, his father was transferred to Nanjing, and Li attended Youfu West Street Primary School. A year later, his father was transferred again to Hangzhou, until his death in 1937, the year the Lugouqiao Incident broke out. After his father died, Li studied at Guangyi Middle School in his home-city Changsha. At the end of the year, due to the impact of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Li's family moved several times in Hunan, passing through Changsha, Anhua County, Loudi, Changning and other places. In April 1941, he returned to Guangyi Middle School with his younger brother. In 1943, he was admitted to National Zhongzheng Medical College (renamed Nanchang Medical College in 1949), where he majored in clinical medicine. After graduating in 1949, he became a resident surgeon of Nanjing Central Hospital. After founding of the Communist State, in June 1950, Li became a surgeon of the East China Military Region Hospital. In 1951, Li was chosen as deputy captain of the Second Operating Team of the Nanjing Counter-American and Aid Korea Volunteer Medical Corps, and came to the rear hospital in Changchun, to treat the wounded transported from the Korean battlefield. Li returned to the East China Military Region Hospital in June 1953. He enlisted in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in April 1963. In May 1966 during the Cultural Revolution, Li was dismissed from the post of deputy director of the First Department of Foreign Affairs and became a general surgeon. In October 1968, he was labeled as a "reactionary academic authority" and was sent to do farm works in a village in Anhui. After the Cultural Revolution, in December 1978, Li became director of the Second Department of Surgery of the General Hospital of the Nanjing Military Region. He joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in March 1979. He rose to become vice president of the General Hospital of the Nanjing Military Region in September 1983. In September 1993, he was employed as vice president of the Clinical School of Nanjing University Medical School. Li married Cheng Yingshi in August 1954. He had no children. Li was a pioneer in the fields of enteric fistula, surgical nutrition support and small bowel transplantation. He developed new methods and principles for the management of enteric fistula, and achieved remarkable results in treating about 900 cases of patients with enteric fistula from 1971 to 1996, with a cure rate of 92.5% and a surgical success rate of 98.7%. He was the founder of clinical parenteral and enteral nutrition in China, and conducted extensive research on the methods, basis and complications of surgical nutrition support. He also made significant contributions to the research and practice of small bowel transplantation, and performed the first successful small bowel transplantation in China and Asia in 1994. He published about 300 papers and 8 books, and participated in the writing of 21 books. He won 11 awards, including the State Science and Technology Progress Award (Second Class) in 1985 and 1995, and the membership of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1996. In 2014, an asteroid was named after him as "Li Jieshou Asteroid". Li died of an illness in Nanjing, Jiangsu, on 30 January 2023, at the age of 98.