Traditional of medicine and surgery in Japan P2

Shidonna Raven
Mar 26
2 min read

Photo Source: Unsplash,

Traditional medicine and surgery in Asia

Japan

In 1570 a 15-volume medical work was published by Menase Dōsan, who also wrote at least five other works. In the most significant of these, the Keitekishū (1574; a manual of the practice of medicine), diseases—or sometimes merely symptoms—are classified and described in 51 groups; the work is unusual in that it includes a section on the diseases of old age. Another distinguished physician and teacher of the period, Nagata Tokuhun, whose important books were the I-no-ben (1585) and the Baika mujinzo (1611), held that the chief aim of the medical art was to support the natural force and, consequently, that it was useless to persist with stereotyped methods of treatment unless the physician had the cooperation of the patient.

European medicine was introduced into Japan in the 16th century by Jesuit missionaries and again in the 17th century by Dutch physicians. Translations of European books on anatomy and internal medicine were made in the 18th century, and in 1836 an influential Japanese work on physiology appeared. In 1857 a group of Dutch-trained Japanese physicians founded a medical school in Edo (later Tokyo) that is regarded as the beginning of the medical faculty of the Imperial University of Tokyo.