Japanese Medical Lives in Transformation: Contesting Modernity in the Late Nineteenth Century

At the end of the 19th century, Japanese modernizers abandoned the traditional Chinese-style medicine that had dominated for centuries, and turned instead to Western medical theory and practice. In this book, Ellen Gardner Nakamura reconsiders the story of the adoption of Western medicine through the eyes of six medical practitioners.

The men who took the lead in transforming Japanese medicine under the new Meiji government were Western-style Japanese physicians, an enthusiastic minority wh...