Abstract
Department of Pharmacy, Tokyo-Kaido Hospital
Shohei Ninomiya is well known as the first modern European-style Medical Representative (MR) in Japan, but he also worked from 1905 to 1911 as the head pharmacist at Sugamo Hospital, the first modern psychiatric hospital in Japan. Though there were few psychiatric medicines in the Meiji period (1868-1912), Ninomiya engaged in clinical pharmaceutical activities at Sugamo Hospital. They include (1) giving psychiatric hospital information to pharmacists, pharmaceutical societies, and the general public; (2) lecturing on pharmaceutical science to nurses and publishing a nursing textbook with the director of nursing at the hospital; (3) providing information on psychiatric medicines in pharmaceutical bulletins; and (4) participating in events organized by the hospital such as psychiatric society meetings and the hospital foundation day celebration.
There were no effective medicines for psychiatric treatments in those days. Nonetheless, Ninomiya found a raison-d’etre for pharmacists at psychiatric hospitals as providers of pharmaceutical information.
In 1911, he resigned from the hospital and began working as an MR at Hoffman La Roche Japan.
