The Vaccinators : Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the 'Opening' of Japan

Ann Jannetta

ISBN 10: 0804754896 / ISBN 13: 9780804754897

Editore: Stanford University Press Mai 2007, 2007

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Neuware - In Japan, as late as the mid-nineteenth century, smallpox claimed the lives of an estimated twenty percent of all children born--most of them before the age of five. When the apathetic Tokugawa shogunate failed to respond to this health crisis, Japanese physicians, learned in Western medicine and medical technology, became the primary disseminators of Jennerian vaccination--a new medical technology to prevent smallpox. Tracing its origins from rural England, Jannetta investigates the transmission of Jennerian vaccination, via various foreign and domestic networks, to and throughout pre-Meiji Japan. Relying on Dutch, Japanese, Russian, and English sources, the book treats Japanese physicians as leading agents of social and institutional change, showing how they used traditional strategies involving scholarship, marriage, and adoption to forge new local, national, and international networks in the first half of the nineteenth century. With an interesting parallel to the recent SARS crisis, The Vaccinators details the appalling cost of Japan's almost three-hundred-year isolation and examines in depth a nation on the cusp of political and social upheaval.

Codice articolo 9780804754897

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: The Vaccinators : Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the 'Opening' of Japan
• Editore: Stanford University Press Mai 2007
• Data di pubblicazione: 2007
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0804754896
• ISBN 13: 9780804754897
• Rilegatura: Buch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 238 L x 159 A x 27 P (millimetri) 238 millimetri di larghezza per 159 millimetri di altezza per 27 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 496 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

In Japan, as late as the mid-nineteenth century, smallpox claimed the lives of an estimated twenty percent of all children born—most of them before the age of five. When the apathetic Tokugawa shogunate failed to respond, Japanese physicians, learned in Western medicine and medical technology, became the primary disseminators of Jennerian vaccination—a new medical technology to prevent smallpox. Tracing its origins from rural England, Jannetta investigates the transmission of Jennerian vaccination to and throughout pre-Meiji Japan. Relying on Dutch, Japanese, Russian, and English sources, the book treats Japanese physicians as leading agents of social and institutional change, showing how they used traditional strategies involving scholarship, marriage, and adoption to forge new local, national, and international networks in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Vaccinators details the appalling cost of Japan's almost 300-year isolation and examines in depth a nation on the cusp of political and social upheaval.

Informazioni sugli autori

Ann Jannetta is Professor of History Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh. Her publications include Epidemics and Mortality in Early Modern Japan and "Public Health and the Diffusion of Vaccination in Japan" in What Do We Know about Asian Population History?

Ann Jannetta is Professor of History Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh. Her publications include Epidemics and Mortality in Early Modern Japan and "Public Health and the Diffusion of Vaccination in Japan" in What Do We Know about Asian Population History?