[7] As leader of the Shanghai chapter of the Pharmaceutical Association of China,[8] Yu attended the inaugural National Public Health Conference in 1929, which was organised by the Nationalist government.

[5] Yu elaborates on his distrust of Chinese medicine in an essay: "We have to first recognize that those utterances about yinyang, the five phases, and the twelve jing-mai (circulation tracts) are simply all lies, absolutely not factual, and completely groundless...

[12] He stressed that he was in favour of "evidence-based formulas" and lamented that Chinese medicine had "regressed" since the Song dynasty.

[13] He cited the Shennong bencao—the earliest Chinese pharmacopoeia—as an example of knowledge based on "real phenomena" instead of qi or yin and yang.

[14] According to Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Yu is "widely credited with creating and promoting the idea of a Chinese medical revolution".