The Vaccinators : Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the ‘Opening’ of Japan

In Japan, as late as the mid-nineteenth century, smallpox claimed the lives of an estimated twenty percent of all children born--most of them before the age of five. When the apathetic Tokugawa shogunate failed to respond, Japanese physicians, learned in Western medicine and medical technology, became the primary disseminators of Jennerian vaccination--a new medical technology to prevent smallpox. Tracing its origins from rural England, Jannetta investigates the transmission of Jennerian vaccination to and throughout pre-Meiji Japan. Relying on Dutch, Japanese, Russian, and English sources, the book treats Japanese physicians as leading agents of social and institutional change, showing how they used traditional strategies involving scholarship, marriage, and adoption to forge new local, national, and international networks in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Vaccinators details the appalling cost of Japan's almost 300-year isolation and examines in depth a nation on the cusp of political and social upheaval "In Japan, as late as the mid-nineteenth century, smallpox claimed the lives of an estimated 20 percent of all children born - most of them before the age of five. When the apathetic Tokugawa shogunate failed to respond to this health crisis, Japanese physicians, learned in Western medicine and medical technology, became the primary disseminators of Jennerian vaccination - a new medical technology to prevent smallpox. Tracing its origins from rural England, Jannetta investigates the transmission of Jennerian vaccination, via various foreign and domestic networks, to and throughout pre-Meiji Japan. Relying on Dutch, Japanese, Russian, and English sources, the book treats Japanese physicians as leading agents of social and institutional change, showing how they used traditional strategies involving scholarship, marriage, and adoption to forge new local, national, and international networks in the first half of the nineteenth century. With an interesting parallel to the recent SARS crisis, The Vaccinators details the appalling cost of Japan's almost three-hundred-year isolation and examines in depth a nation on the cusp of political and social upheaval." --Book Jacket. In Japan, as late as the mid-nineteenth century, smallpox claimed the lives of an estimated twenty percent of all children bornmost of them before the age of five. When the apathetic Tokugawa shogunate failed to respond to this health crisis, Japanese physicians, learned in Western medicine and medical technology, became the primary disseminators of Jennerian vaccinationa new medical technology to prevent smallpox. Tracing its origins from rural England, Jannetta investigates the transmission of Jennerian vaccination, via various foreign and domestic networks, to and throughout pre-Meiji Japan. Relying on Dutch, Japanese, Russian, and English sources, the book treats Japanese physicians as leading agents of social and institutional change, showing how they used traditional strategies involving scholarship, marriage, and adoption to forge new local, national, and international networks in the first half of the nineteenth century. With an interesting parallel to the recent SARS crisis, The Vaccinators details the appalling cost of Japan's almost three-hundred-year isolation and examines in depth a nation on the cusp of political and social upheaval. Frontmatter List of Illustrations (page ix) List of Tables (page xi) Conventions Used (page xiii) Preface (page xv) Introduction (page 1) 1. Confronting Smallpox (page 8) 2. Jenner's Cowpox Vaccine (page 25) 3. Engaging the Periphery (page 53) 4. The Dutch Connection: Batavia, Nagasaki, and Edo (page 78) 5. Constructing a Network: The Ranpō Physicians (page 102) 6. The Vaccinators (page 132) 7. Engaging the Center (page 160) Conclusion (page 181) Appendix 1. Japanese Names Mentioned in the Text, with Birth and Death Years (page 189) Appendix 2. Philipp Franz von Siebold's Students at Narutaki (page 193) Appendix 3. Alphabetized List of Otamagaike Sponsors (page 195) Notes (page 203) References (page 225) Index (page 235) By the mid-19th century, when Japan was still largely closed to the West, smallpox epidemics had killed an estimated ten percent of the Japanese population. This text details the appalling cost of Japan's almost 300 year isolation and examines in depth a nation on the cusp of political and social upheaval The Vaccinators examines the way a new generation of physicians in Tokugawa Japan transmitted global knowledge of Jennerian vaccination-a new medical technology that prevented smallpox.