Yokasagen is one of the most important writings by Seishu Hanaoka about his style of surgery. It describes about a hundred and fourteen surgical diseases and their signs, symptoms, and treatments. The names and descriptions of the diseases follow the same order as those in the Chinese surgical textbook Gekaseiso (wàikē zhèngzōng), but the explanations of the diseases come from Hanaoka’s own experiences. After a meticulous examination of fifty-four Yokasagen manuscripts, it was conluded that the one transcribed by Keisetsu Miwa, who joined Shunrinken in 1807, is the oldest. It is likely to have appeared in 1808. The manuscripts can be classified into two categories: Miwa and non-Miwa.

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We can find several female traditional medical doctors in the registers of physicians, for example in Nihon Iseki, in the Meiji era. Traditional doctors were doctors who didn’t take the national examination, but were finally admitted as physicians by the government. They had existed during the modernization of medicine, along with the doctors who had been promoted by the government. At least 73 female traditional doctors are found in several medical register books. However, because they were female, they were not granted the exceptional provision given to the male successors of traditional doctors that allowed them to succeed as practitioners if they were over 25 years old in 1882. These matters show us that female traditional doctors recorded in the register books had already begun to work in local areas by 1882. Many of the female traditional doctors who were recorded in biographies were often the daughters of doctors. In other words, not only sons, but also daughters, could succeed their father’s role as practitioners. Following them, modern female doctors who passed the national examination appeared.

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The purpose of this study is to clarify the British army nursing system and its influences during WWII, in order to get wide historical perspectives for the study of wartime nursing. Results show that the UK’s Army Nursing Service started from a small number of nurses who were elites and who supervised male orderlies, based on Nightingale’s idea that the British government had the responsibility for British wounded and sick in wartime. The empire’s war and the two world wars increased the demands on nursing. Volunteers, such as those from the Red Cross nurses and colonial people from the outside of the UK, were introduced into the work force. For emergency hospitals for the wounded and for those injured by air raids, qualified nurses were mobilized from civil hospitals, and in their place nurse students took charge of hospital labor. A nurse who was contracted with the military could not make a request about the place of work, but was considered on the basis of opinions and hopes regarding duties at the hospital, and worked individually while moving in the hospital. Also, marriage was permitted, even during the mission. During the war, the ranks and positions of military nurses were increased to the same level as those of male officers, but on the other hand, the military class system and the severity of discipline had an influence on nursing education and practice.

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Seishu Hanaoka coined several Japanese terms of surgical diseases; sabi (nasal atresia), sain (vaginal atresia), and sako (anal atresia). However, it had remained unknown as to when and in what writings those words appeared the first time. I made a careful examination of Hanaoka’s writings and identified their first appearances in his writings. Although the word sako had been coined in Gujin Yitong in 1557 in China, Seishu is most likely to have coined sako independently because at that time another word, sato, was widely used in China and Japan. Sain and sako have been used in the current Japanese medical textbooks. They appear also in the most popular and authoritative Japanese dictionaries Kojien and Nihon Kokugodaijiten. Gencho Honma, a disciple of Hanaoka, made the word sakyu to describe uterine atresia in 1859, but it became a dead word later.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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