Jennerian vaccination and the creation of a national public health agenda in Japan, 1850-1900

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Volumn 83, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 125-140

  Jannetta, Ann ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH   (United States)

Author keywords

A. J. C. geertz; Arm to arm method; Baba sajur ; Eisei kyoku; Jan cock blomhoff; Jennerian vaccination; Levysshon; Nagasaki; Nagayo sensai; Otamagaike; Otto mohnike; Public health in Japan; Rangaku; Ranp ; Vaccination proclamation; Variolation

Indexed keywords

SMALLPOX VACCINE;

ARTICLE; GOVERNMENT; HEALTH CARE POLICY; HISTORY; HUMAN; IMMUNIZATION; JAPAN; PUBLIC HEALTH; SMALLPOX; VACCINATION;

GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS; HEALTH POLICY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HUMANS; IMMUNIZATION; JAPAN; PUBLIC HEALTH; SMALLPOX; SMALLPOX VACCINE; VACCINATION;

EID: 67651236364     PISSN: 00075140     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. A social history of the introduction of vaccination to Japan can be found in Ann Jannetta, The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the "Opening" of Japan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007). This article provides a short narrative covering events concerning vaccination that took place in Japan under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate; it then turns to a discussion of the ways in which the vaccination policies promulgated by Japan's Meiji government produced the foundation for a national public health agenda by the end of the nineteenth century.
2. The American ship Rebecca, a neutral ship chartered by the Dutch East Indies to carry the Japan trade in 1803, brought news of Jenner's discovery to the Dutch Factory at Nagasaki. A young Dutch interpreter,
3. Baba Sajūrō, learned about vaccination from Hendrik Doeff, the director of the Dutch Factory from 1803 to 1817. In 1820 Baba completed Tonka hiketsu [The Way to Avoid Smallpox], a translation of a Russian vaccination tract, published in 1805, that reached Japan in 1812. Baba Sajūrō's translation remained unpublished during his lifetime, but it was copied and circulated privately until 1850, when it was edited and published by Toshimitsu Sen'an as Roshia gyūtō zensho [Treatise on Russian Cowpox] (Edo, 1850). For additional information about Japanese translations of Western medical writings on vaccination, see Jannetta, The Vaccinators (n. 1), chap. 3.
4. Jan Cock Blomhoff, director of the Dutch Factory in Nagasaki between 1817 and 1823, initiated the effort to acquire vaccine from the Medical Service at Batavia in 1820. Vaccine lymph was sent in 1821, 1822, and 1823. In 1823,
5. Blomhoff recruited two Japanese physicians to assist the factory doctor, Nicholas Tullingh, but this and all subsequent attempts at vaccination with imported lymph failed. National Archive in The Hague, Nederlandse Japan Factorij (hereafter NFJ), 1609-1860, Dutch Factory in Japan, 1609-1860, p. 695: outgoing letter from Jan Cock Blomhoff to Council at Batavia, no date, 1821.
6. Soekawa Masao, Nihon tō byō shi josetsu [An Outline History of Smallpox in Japan] (Tokyo: Kindai shuppan, 1987), pp. 8-9.
7. See Saburō Miyashita, "A Bibliography of the Dutch Medical Books Translated into Japanese," Archives Internationales D'Histoire des Sciences, 1975, 25(96): 8-61.
8. See Richard Rubinger, Private Academies of Tokugawa Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), chap. 4, 5.
9. Ann Bowman Jannetta, Epidemics and Mortality in Early Modern Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), chap. 4.
10. The child was Narabayashi Kenzaburō, the third son of Narabayashi Sōken, a Nagasaki ranpō physician. Soekawa, Nihon tō byō shi (n. 4), p. 45.
11. For a detailed account of the rapid transmission of cowpox vaccine in Japan in 1849, see Jannetta, The Vaccinators (n. 1), chap. 6.
12. Tennentō no zero e no michi [The Road to the Eradication of Smallpox] (Tokyo: Naitō kinen kusuri hakubutsukan, 1983), p. 36.
13. NFJ (n. 3), 1632/36, letter from Mohnike to Levyssohn, 11 November 1849.
14. Many people participated in the transmission of the vaccine virus. It was hand-carried to physicians in major cities and distributed from cities to nearby towns and villages. A chronology of the 1849 transmission is found in Jannetta, The Vaccinators (n. 1), pp. 146-47.
15. Tennentō no zero e no michi (n. 10), p. 36.
16. Soekawa, Nihon tōbyō shi (n. 4), pp. 60-61.
17. Brett L. Walker, "The Early Modern Japanese State and Ainu Vaccination: Redefining the Body Politic, 1799-1868," Past Present, 1999, 163 : 121-60. This excellent article gives a detailed account of the Ezo vaccination campaign of 1857.
18. Fukase Yasuaki, "Otamagaike shutōjo kaisetsu o megutte" [A Consideration of the Otamagaike Vaccination Clinic], Part 2, Nihon ishigaku zasshi, 1980, 26 : 420-31.
19. Ann B. Jannetta and Samuel H. Preston, "Two Centuries of Mortality Change in Central Japan: The Evidence from a Temple Death Register," Popul. Stud., 1991, 45 : 417-36.
20. Devastating epidemics of cholera and measles struck Japan soon after the ports opened to foreign traders in 1858, and these were followed by epidemic typhus and bubonic plague, which heretofore had been unknown in Japan: Jannetta, Epidemics and Mortality (n. 7), pp. 189-207.
21. Ann Jannetta, "Nagayo Sensai," in Doctors, Nurses, and Medical Practitioners: A Bio- Bibliographical Source Book, ed. Lois N. Magner (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997), pp. 200-201.
22. Soekawa, Nihon tō byō shi (n. 4), pp. 33-34.
23. Nagayo Sensai, Shōkō shishi [An Autobiography], in Matsumoto Jun and Nagayo Sensai, ed. Teizō Ogawa and Sakai Shizu (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1980).
24. Jannetta, "Nagayo Sensai" (n. 19), p. 198.
25. Ibid., p. 199.
26. The Iwakura Mission was a Meiji government-sponsored tour of European countries and the United States, headed by Iwakura Tomomi (1825-83), a court noble who had supported the Meiji Restoration. Its purpose was to learn about the operations of industries and governments in the West.
27. Yamazaki Tasuku, Nihon ekishi oyobi bōeki shi [The History of Epidemics and their Prevention in Japan] (Tokyo: Kokuseidō, 1931), p. 361.
28. Soekawa, Nihon tōbyō shi (n. 4), pp. 33-34.
29. Annual reports of the Eisei Kyoku covered calendar years from 1 July through 30 June beginning in July 1875. These reports have been reprinted as Meiji-ki, eisei kyoku nenpō, 1875-1900, 7 vols. (Tokyo: Harashobō, 1992).
30. Ibid., 1: 21-23.
31. Ibid., p. 83.
32. Soekawa, Nihon tōbyō shi (n. 4), p. 185.
33. Ibid.
34. Meiji-ki, eisei kyoku nenpō (n. 27), vol. 2, 1 July 1880 (Meiji 13)-30 June 1881 (Meiji 14), Appendix 5, pp. 536-37.
35. Ibid., vol. 3, 1 July 1881 (Meiji 14)-30 June 1882 (Meiji 15), Appendix 4, p. 385.
36. Ibid., vol. 4, 1 July 1882 (Meiji 15)-30 June 1882 (Meiji 16), Appendix 4, p. 643.
37. Ibid., vol. 1, 1 July 1875 (Meiji 8)-30 June 1880 (Meiji 13), pp. 24a-24b. The first reports came from Japan's three cities-Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto-later followed by data reported by prefecture to the Eisei Kyoku in Tokyo.
38. Yamazaki, Nihon ekishi (n. 25), p. 361.
39. A. J. C. Geertz, "Vaccination in Japan," Japan Weekly Mail, Yokohama, 12 June 1879. Geertz's letter provides statistics showing the number of vaccinations and revaccinations performed in Japan during the period from 1 July 1875 to 31 December 1877. Geertz's letter includes an English translation of the eight articles in the Eisei Kyoku's Sanitary Code that pertain to vaccination regulation.