Changes

Western medicine slowly filtered into Japan during the Tokugawa period (1600-1858). While Japanese variants of Chinese medicine dominated Japanese medical practice, western medicine made significant inroads and penetrated Japan. John Bowers claims that Western medicine ultimately triumphed over Chinese medicine due to the perseverance of Japanese students, scholars and European physicians stationed at Deshima. This paper will examine the gradual expansion of western medicine throughout Japan and examine some of its most important practitioners and advocates.

Still the progress of Western medicine was exceedingly slow. But by 1849, Western medicine was able to successfully procure a smallpox vaccination for Japan. By utilizing the developing rural ranpo medical networks, Japanese physicians were able vaccinate Japanese citizens. Even if the knowledge of Western medicine among Japanese physicians in 1849 was rudimentary and unsystematic, the networks developed to spread Western thought contributed to controlling smallpox, a disease that Japanese medicine was defenseless against.