The governor of the Nagoya domain, TOKUGAWA Yoshinobu, had been bedridden with a cold since the spring of Meiji year 3 (1870). YAMADA Ryozan and NAKAJIMA Sanhaku, court physicians, diagnosed his illness as pulmonary tuberculosis. His treatment continued for half a year but he did not improve at all, so MATSUMOTO Ryojun, POMPE's leading disciple, was asked to make a house call from Tokyo. "The governor contracted bronchial catarrh. The Chinese medicine doctors kept him warm, so he coughed and ran a fever as soon as he inhaled cold air. It was fortunate that I happened to have some quinine of the highest quality. Once he took two packages of the quinine I presented, his fever went down."
This story reflects a time in which doctors of Chinese medicine were on the wane, not only in smallpox vaccination and surgery but also in internal medicine. However, NAKAJIMA Sanhaku was not a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine but a doctor of both Chinese and Dutch medicine. He learned Western medicine from MATSUMOTO Ryojun and SASAKI Toyo and was interested in reorganizing the domain school "Meirindo" as a medical school, and thus never shut his eyes to the changing times.
In the early Meiji years, doctors who were inspired by the effectiveness of Western medicine as demonstrated by vaccinations leading to freedom from smallpox, the treatment of cholera and venereal disease, and surgical operations, became keenly aware of the need for the establishment of a school of Western medicine.
In Meiji year 2 or 3, three former domain doctors, ISHII Ryuan, a first-grade domain doctor, ITO Keisuke and NAKAJIMA Sanhaku who was a court physician to TOKUGAWA Yoshinobu, signed and sent the Nagoya domain a proposal that a school of Western medicine should be established in Nagoya. The following is an outline of their proposal:
Because there is no school of Western medicine in this district, when a person living in Owari wants to learn Western medicine he has no choice but to visit other domains and study with much difficulty in a limited space of time. We deeply regret these circumstances.
We wish very much to establish a school of Western medicine here in Owari and to educate young people aspiring to learn Western medicine through lectures using translated and original books, teaching pharmacy and medical chemistry, and performing autopsies and examinations.
We have had many discussions about the realization of a school of Western medicine. As we have no appropriate facility, we have been trying to use our smallpox vaccination clinic as a "School of Medical Science". However, it is too small to give lectures to the hundreds of students who gather, especially in spring and fall. Even if we wanted to build an extension to the clinic, we have no funds.
We ask you to provide, via an official order, a building of appropriate scale for a school of Western medicine in Nagoya City. It would be extremely significant if we could move the smallpox vaccination clinic into the building and utilize the classroom as a hospital as well, to provide medical examination and treatment for patients.
Details of the proposal, how it came about, when and where it was filed, etc. are unclear, but it indicates that the foundation of the Nagoya University School of Medicine was based on a Western medical school developed from a smallpox vaccination clinic. In October, Meiji year 3 (1870), ISHII and ITO were appointed as the persons in charge of opening the hospital. In August of Meiji year 4 (1871) the temporary hospital and school were opened. Thanks to these historical facts ISHII, ITO and NAKAJIMA are respected as the three honorable founders of the School. |
