A Sincere Tribute to Dr. John M. King

-- Dr. John M. King’s Stories in Taiwan

The first time I met Dr. John M. King was back in 1975, and the story started from the necropsy room of the Animal Industry Research Institute (AIRI) of Taiwan Sugar company. That necropsy room was located at Chunan, Miaoli, where an inventory of 40,000 pig farms was around. At that time, Dr. Robert C. T. Lee was implementing a joint project by AIRI and Pig Research Institute Taiwan for compiling "an Atlas of Pathology in the Pig", and Dr. King was invited to write this textbook, which we still use.

There were three veterinarians, including me, in a routine practice of the necropsy of dead pigs in the AIRI, and Dr. Frank H. Hsu was the chief veterinary pathologist. In a conversation, Dr. Hsu seriously claimed that Dr. King was hot-tempered and difficult to get along with. Therefore, before Dr. King's arrival in the late summer of 1975, that preconceived idea about him made us expect an extraordinary American veterinary pathologist with unpredictable temperament. However, on the first day we met, Dr. King surprised us with his cordial and down-to-earth manners. He inspected the necropsy room and began to clean windows partially covered by dust. He told us he would like to have the work place for “show and tell” be bright and with good ventilation.

Subsequently, in the early winter of 1975, the staff on Taiwan Sugar Company farm had more outbreaks of respiratory symptoms in growing pigs than previous years. After performing necropsies, Dr. King said the pleuropneumonia lesion was similar to Pasterella pneumonia in pig and Mycoplasma mycoide pneumonia in cattle, and hence he made a request to culture Haemophilus (now Actinobacillus). It was the first reported case of Haemophilus pneumonia in Taiwan. With Dr. King's guidance and the antibiotic sensitivity test of the causative bacterial organism, the staff on the farrow-to-finish swine farm of Taiwan Sugar Company learned how to intervene in growing pig pleuropneumonia.

Since then, Dr. King has been my teacher, mentor and friend for forty years, offered me advice from time to time. Dr. King's second visit to Taiwan was in June 1981. This time, he acted as a consultant veterinarian for the Nuclear Swine Farm and the Boar Test Station in Pig Research Institute, Taiwan (PRIT), and offered pathological training courses for local veterinarians. At that time, I was working for a farrow-to-nursery sow farm at central Taiwan. In a holiday, Dr. and Mrs. King and I went bird watching in Nantoe County. Afterwards, I took them to the farm where I worked to seek solution for the fall-behind segregated nursery piglets. Dr. King suggested that the piglets should be culled for biosecurity. Later, I found moribund pigs with rough hair and diarrhea infected with Classical Swine Fever. Dr. King insisted that if petechial hemorrhages in the urinary bladder was observed, the first gross diagnosis should be Classical Swine Fever (Hog Cholera); he was absolutely right about that.

I also changed my way of farm management by following his recommendations of improving efficiency. While working in the aforementioned farm from 1978 to 1981, I only took two days off per month. He encouraged me to reflect on how to make the swine production more efficient, and part of the solution is to work hard while I was on duty, and to have good relaxation during the non-working days.

Later in 1981, I accepted a job offer in PRIT. In that position, I was able to make correct diagnoses of swine diseases with the help of the necropsy technique and swine-farm managing knowhow, thanks to my pathology training under Dr. King. He definitely played an indispensable role in the achievement of my professional expertise on the diagnosis of swine diseases.

Dr. King also made a significant impact on the type of knife used in necropsy in Taiwan. In the early days, the skinner knife was used in performing a necropsy in Taiwan sugar company. But ever since Dr. King’s first visit to Taiwan in 1975, the 6” boner knife and the way he used it to carry out professional tasks have been popularized in the circle of veterinarians. It can be said that since then most veterinary pathologists in Taiwan have been influenced by this transformation by Dr. King.

Dr. King’s visit to Taiwan in the middle of 2010 was a great moment for us. His visit to three veterinary schools and an animal health research institute were arranged by Dr. F. M. Wu and supported by the fund of BAPHIQ in Taiwan. Collage of veterinary medicine of National Chung Hsing University was honored to be one of the schools. To seize the precious opportunity to learn from Dr. King's expertise, we acquired a 70 kg growing pig for him to perform the necropsy technique for the graduate and senior veterinary students in the necropsy room of Animal Disease Diagnostic Center. During this specific teaching demonstration, the knives I prepared for him were discarded (as I expected) because of dullness. Dr. King, at the age of 84, still used the necropsy knife he carried from the United States. He demonstrated and explained to us how to take samples from a pig: making an external examination first, and then extending it to histopathological examination. All of us were grateful and honored to witness this wonderful moment that forty years after his first visit to Taiwan in 1975, even retired from Cornell University, Dr. King was still a shiny star in the field of veterinary pathology.

Later that day, Dr. King and participants in the teaching demonstration joined a luncheon party at the CVM of National Chung-Hsing University, and we sang “On the Railroad” and played violin together. After staying for a week at Taichung Evergreen Hotel, he mentioned to me that compared with other cities where he had ever visited and stayed, the city of Taichung was the cleanest.

Dr. C. I. Liu and I saw Dr. John M. King off in the early morning of May 8th, 2010 at the Taipei International Airport. He would take a 10:00 a.m. UA flight back to New York. Before departure, we had coffee at the Burger King, and that was when we hugged each other and said farewell. The last new year card I received from Dr. King was dated January 25th, 2016, and he wrote “I am getting older, slower, clumber...”His handwriting was still sound and clear, although it took me more time to read this unique card from Dr. King.

I know from now on I will not get any personal letter or card from Dr. King, yet his advice and encouragement always emerge in my mind whenever I encounter a challenge from an unknown carcass or a surgical pathology sample collected from all kinds of animal. Following Dr. King’s approach, not only big problem can be solved, detailed minor problem can also be treated by performing histopathological tests and examination.

Pathology is something you will never know enough, and Dr. King's guidance will still be instrumental in further exploring its frontier. Dr. John M. King, our mentor, has passed away. However, the approach he used to inspired our minds, and the manners in which he touched our hearts, will have enduring influence in the field of pathology in Taiwan. That will make us miss him even more.