LE HUU TRAC

• Born:
• Nationality: Vietnamese
• Profession: Physician

Lê Hữu Trác or alias Hải Thượng Lãn Ông, was an 18th-century Vietnamese physician who was the best known and most celebrated doctor in Vietnamese history. Hữu Trác was conscripted into the army in 1740 at the age of sixteen. In 1746 he withdrew from the army after his eldest brother died and lived in Hương Sơn District with his elderly mother. His own son died in a smallpox epidemic in 1758 when he was five years old. He then spent the next fifteen years learning medicine, with a particular focus on curing smallpox. He traveled to Đông Kinh in 1782, by order of lord Trịnh Sâm, to treat the Crown Prince.