Liu Jui-heng (23 July 1890-28 August 1961), known as J. Heng Liu. As minister of health (1929-30) and director general of the National Health Administration (1931-37), he laid the foundations of the Chinese national public health service. In the 1940's he became associated with the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China, and in the 1950's he worked to coordinate the public health activities of various government agencies in Taiwan. The son of Liu T'ung-hsuan, J. Heng Liu was born in Tientsin. After studying at Anglo- Chinese College from 1902 to 1904 and at Peiyang College from 1904 to 1906, J. Heng Liu went to the United States and enrolled at Harvard College. He was graduated in 1909, at the age of 18, with a B.S. degree. He then entered the Harvard Medical School, where he received the M.D. cum laude in 1913, after which he completed his training in surgery at Boston City Hospital.

Liu returned to China in 1915, where he spent three years teaching surgery at Shanghai under the auspices of the Harvard Medical School of China. In 1918 he joined the staff of the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) as an associate in surgery. He went to the United States in 1920 to do cancer research with Dr. James B. Murphy at the Rockefeller Institute in New York and later spent several months studying under Dr. James C. Bloodgood of the medical school of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. After returning to China in 1923, he was named superintendent and associate professor of surgery of the PUMC, which was the major teaching and research center of Western medical science in China. On 26 January 1925 he and Dr. Adrian S. Taylor performed exploratory surgery on Sun Yat-sen which revealed inoperable cancer of the liver and other organs. Sun died at Peking in March, and a Christian funeral service w^as held at the PUMC chapel.

J. Heng Liu believed and taught that public service was more important than private practice, however lucrative. In November 1928 he agreed to assume office as administrative vice minister of health in the National Government. A year later, he became minister of health and a director of the PUMC. He also served as vice chairman of the advisory committee in the Health Organization of the League of Nations beginning in 1930 and as surgeon general of the Chinese army after 1930. When the National Government was reorganized in April 1931, he became director general of the new National Health Administration, a cabinetlevel post. Between 1928 and 1937 J. Heng Liu laid the foundations of a national public health service. The year 1928 saw the publication of a national sanitary code and the compilation of a national register of Western medical practitioners. At a conference of the China Medical Association held at Nanking in 1929 Liu outlined his threeyear plan for the ministry of health, which included the establishing of a central field health station at Nanking, a national quarantine service, and midwifery schools at Nanking and Canton. A national pharmacopeia was adopted in 1930 and published in 1931.

J. Heng Liu's executive ability enabled him to spread the knowledge and benefits of Western medicine in a country that previously had been ignorant of the principles and practices of public health and modern medical therapy. Under his direction, significant progress also was made in the field of preventive medicine. In October 1934 the ninth conference of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine was held at Nanking. Except for a plague conference held at Mukden in 1911 {see Wu Lien-te), this was the first international medical conference to be held in China. The meeting was held at the Central Field Health Station across from the Nanking Field Hospital, both of which had been founded under Liu's direction. Liu presided over the meeting, and he was able to point with some pride to the notable advances made during his term of office at Nanking. He praised his PUMC colleagues for their roles in these programs, particularly Dr. John B. Grant. Liu later said that he had "relied on Dr. Grant as adviser and collaborator" and that "many of the higher positions in the ministry, and in the newly created departments of health in the cities and provinces, were given to men and women trained by Dr. Grant." The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in the summer of 1937 caused the suspension of most of the National Government's health programs, and in 1938 Liu moved to Hong Kong. He went to the United States in 1942, and in 1944 he became medical director of the China Defense Supplies Commission, which was responsible for the procurement and allocation of wartime aid to China. He also became associated with the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China (ABMAC).

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Liu returned to China to supervise the medical aid program conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration through its Chinese counterpart, the Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. In 1946 he became field director for ABMAC, with headquarters at Shanghai, and he set about planning a gradual shift from postwar relief work to a peacetime program of medical reconstruction and education. In 1948, despite the Kuomintang- Communist civil war, he traveled extensively in China, visiting medical schools and hospitals. After moving to Taiwan in 1949, J. Heng Liu worked in Taipei to help maintain a small body of trained medical personnel to form the nucleus of a government health service. He became vice president in charge of ABMAC field work in Taiwan and president of the Chinese Red Cross Society; and he worked to coordinate the public health activities of various government agencies until June 1959, when ill health forced him to resign from his offices and go to the United States for treatment and rest. In 1960 the National Government in Taiwan awarded him the Order of the Brilliant Star in recognition of his contributions to public health in China. Liu served as a director of ABMAC until July 1961, when he was hospitalized in New York after suffering a stroke. He died on 28 August 1961. He was survived by his wife, nee Lucille Wang, whom he had married in 1915, and by their daughter, Irene, w-ho was the wife of the economist Chi-ming Hou.