近代日本の開港場における伝染病流行と外国人居留地 : 一八七九年「神奈川県地方衛生会」によるコレラ対策

抄録

During the Meiji era, foreign trade in such treaty ports as Yokohama facilitated the entry of much acute infectious disease into Japan. The morbidity caused by such disease was so high that city authorities were forced to take preventive measures. In 1879, the Yokohama Local Board of Health (YLBH) was organized to deal with an Asiatic cholera epidemic and consisted of Kanagawa prefectural officers, local leaders and medical physicians, both Japanese and foreign. Since the Japanese authorities could not impose the Board's rulings directly upon foreigners, the Prefecture decided to employ foreign doctors to deal indirectly with sanitation problems in the foreign settlement there. Focusing on the administrative side of the YLBH, the author argues that 1) Kanagawa Prefecture was able to establish disease control throughout the Yokohama treaty-port and 2) by virtue of foreign physicians taking the initiative within the YLBH, it was their organizational skills, medical know-how and ideas that determined the sanitary measures implemented throughout the treaty-port. Large-scale measures, like the development and construction of toilet facilities and implementation of hygienic inspections, deserves special mention, since it was such measures that contributed significantly to the sanitary improvements that occurred in Yokohama under the YLBH. In addition, the successful efforts of the YLBH did not go unnoticed by the Japanese central government, which then instituted a similar system of local boards of health in all of Japan's prefectures.