On the contrary, vaccination played an essential role in developing Japanese medical institutions. Its two most famous medical schools, for example, started off as vaccination hospitals. And the fact that vaccination spread not as the result of a government decision or policy, but rather as a consequence of an informal network of highly motivated and surprisingly well-informed doctors, in a state in which governmental control was supposed to be absolute, had a social and political effect far beyond the merely medical one.
Some of the detail in the book may be redundant for the general reader, but the account of the discovery and spread throughout the world of vaccination, and of the very long role of the Dutch in the history of Japan, is admirably clear. After reading The Vaccinators you might also understand a little better why the Japanese were able to adopt so much so quickly from the West, even after centuries of isolation, without losing their unique character.
The discount offers on books in this section remain open for three months from date of publication.
The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge and the ‘Opening’ of Japan
by Ann Jannetta
Stanford University Press, £28.95, pp. 245,
ISBN 9780804754897
£23.16 (plus £2.45 p+p) 0870 429 6655
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.