mandag 19. mai 2025

The True Story of How a Chinese Farmer Died in 1830s London

In the spring of 1831, hundreds of spectators and journalists gathered at Guy’s Hospital in London to watch as three British surgeons attempted to remove a massive tumor from the genitals of a 32-year-old Chinese farmer named Hoo Loo. The operation took one hour and forty-four minutes and was carried out without anesthesia. Hoo Loo lost consciousness several times and eventually died on the table. Once removed, his tumor weighed in at 56 pounds.

This tragic episode is the subject of “The Death of Hoo Loo: The 1831 Medical Incident That Shook the World,” published on the Chinese mainland last year. Though modest in length — just 150,000 Chinese characters — the book took its author, the Fudan University-based historian Gao Xi, 37 years to complete.