Profile

Published China's first clinical report on Eucommia tincture for hypertension in 1954, based on observation of 119 cases

Story

Guo Jinyuan (1914–1991) was a renowned Chinese internist and gastroenterology expert. In the early 1950s, following Soviet medical literature reporting the antihypertensive effects of Eucommia, the Department of Internal Medicine at Shanghai Tongji Hospital under his leadership pioneered clinical validation of Eucommia in China, treating 119 hypertensive patients with 10% Eucommia tincture for up to 23 months and achieving an overall efficacy rate of 42.8%. The results, published in the Chinese Medical Journal in 1954, constitute China's earliest and largest-sample clinical report on Eucommia for hypertension.

The report directly spurred a nationwide wave of research on Eucommia for hypertension in the 1950s, with institutions such as Tianjin Third Hospital successively conducting clinical observations of Eucommia tincture. Guo later moved to Wuhan with Tongji Medical College, where he founded the Department of Gastroenterology and the Institute of Liver Diseases at Tongji Hospital and edited Symptoms and Diagnosis in Internal Medicine, among the earliest internal medicine textbooks of New China. He died in 1991 at the age of 77.

Milestones

• Earned his medical doctorate from the University of Munich, Germany, in 1939 and returned to China in 1946
• After 1949, successively served as professor at Wuhan Medical College (Tongji Medical University), director of the Teaching and Research Section of Internal Medicine at Tongji Hospital, and doctoral supervisor
• Served as standing committee member of the Gastroenterology Society of the Chinese Medical Association and deputy editor-in-chief of the Chinese Journal of Digestion, among more than ten journal positions

Key Contributions

• Published 'A Preliminary Report on Eucommia in the Treatment of Hypertension' (pp. 704–707) in the Chinese Medical Journal, No. 9, 1954
• Treated 119 hypertensive patients with 10% Eucommia tincture over 1–23 months of observation, achieving an efficacy rate of 42.8%, with satisfactory cases showing blood pressure reduced to normal or near-normal levels
• Founded the Department of Gastroenterology and the Digestive Endoscopy Center at Tongji Hospital; a pioneer of gastroenterology and a renowned hepatology expert in China
• Initiated the founding of China's first medical popular-science magazine, Medicine for the Public (Dazhong Yixue), in 1948 and served as its editor-in-chief for over a decade