Medical Drive for China--One for the Books : U.S. Couple Send Thousands of Donated Volumes to Alleviate Shortage

Never a day goes by that Dr. Jordan M. Phillips doesn’t turn over a new leaf.

He can’t avoid it. Piled within his warehouse in Santa Fe Springs are tens of thousands of medical books--and as fast as he can ship them out, more keep arriving daily.

This overwhelmingly exceeds the expectations of the retired Downey physician who, after several visits to China with his wife, Mary, decided to embark on a venture to aid his colleagues in the People’s Republic.

“Most of the medical books were destroyed during the cultural revolution from 1966 to 1976,” he said. “Only a few volumes were saved by being hidden in such places as caves.”

Lectures at Chinese Hospitals

It happened that while he and his wife were taking in the Great Wall and other sites in 1979, they asked to visit a few hospitals, and he subsequently was invited to give lectures. Phillips, an emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UC Irvine, specializes in laparoscopy--which enables a surgeon to peer inside an abdomen through a half-inch incision.

On a subsequent trip, Phillips said he performed China’s first-ever laparoscopy--which diagnosed a hitherto unsuspected ectopic pregnancy in a woman’s Fallopian tube.

On that flight over, he also had hand-carried medical instruments donated by American companies, much-needed equipment distributed to hospitals in China.

But on the way back, the lack of books weighed on his mind. “Four years ago, my wife and I formed a nonprofit corporation called Medical Books for China,” he said. “We hired a worker, Jan Foster, who sent letters to 1,200 medical libraries in the United States.”

Since then more than 800,000 books and journals have arrived. To put that into perspective, a typical medical library has 60,000 such publications.

“When we started, I was still in my office in Downey,” said Phillips, now 62. “As the first books began arriving, we put them in the hallway. Then we ran out of room and put them in the waiting room, even in the bathroom. Next we bought a storage trailer and parked it outside.”

That was just the beginning. “We filled our two garages and parked our car on the street. We rented those U-store spaces until we had nine of them crammed.

“It came to the point late in 1984 where I had to buy a warehouse with 11,000 square feet that used to hold stationery for a wholesaler. I have six employees who unpack, sort, catalogue and ship.”

The cost is all borne privately, mostly by the Phillipses. “We have had not penny one of government help,” he said.

None of the donated specialized reading is in Chinese, but the physician explained that most Chinese intellectuals read and speak English now.

Inside the concrete warehouse, at least two shipments of books arrive daily in cartons--about 100 of them. Workers unpack and sort them by year. To keep current, the Chinese want information from 1970 and later.

Sometimes there is a bonanza. “The National Institutes of Health in Maryland sent a 40-foot trailer packed with books,” Phillips said.

Occasionally a well-meaning library will include in its shipment an elderly tome, such as a yellowing one dated 1824 and entitled “Good’s Study of Medicine.” Such volumes are consigned to a shelf and eventually will be donated to some American collection.

Books and journals destined for China, volumes such as “Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism,” are inventoried as they are received, then logged in a computer as they are sent. They are packed 20 to 40 to a box, until there are enough boxes to load a 20-ton container for forwarding aboard a freighter.

“So far we have sent seven of these shiploads--several hundred thousand books and journals,” Phillips said. “The Chinese government pays the freight cost from Long Beach, and has a committee over there that sees to the free distribution of everything.”

Even though American owners of medical books and journals and teaching materials have been generous so far, more contributions are needed. They may be sent to 13021 E. Florence Ave., Santa Fe Springs, Calif., 90670.

The one-time tourist couple now are familiar faces in China’s medical community. They have made 27 visits, and another is scheduled in October. Mary Phillips is a photographer during lectures and operations. It has reached the point where they spend half the year in Asia.

Introduces Team Concept

While in China, Jordan Phillips sometimes performs as many as 10 surgeries a day. He said he favors and has introduced there the team concept, whereby a doctor uses the same anesthetist and special nurses during every procedure.

The populous Asian nation is encouraging married couples to limit themselves to one child. “It used to be two,” Phillips said. Some women, who thought they had completed having their families, had themselves sterilized by means of tying the Fallopian tubes, he added.

“Then came the great earthquake in Tangshan in 1976, and many of those mothers lost their families. We used microsurgery to enable them to become pregnant again.”

There are times, however, when words accomplish more than deeds--especially when they are between covers and can be used to instruct others.

And in the unlikely setting of an industrial section of Santa Fe Springs, a warehouse door rolls up daily--for a people-to-people program whose ratings are the highest possible.