An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2024 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

16055 entries, 14138 authors and 1945 subjects. Updated: November 3, 2024

KULMUS, Johann Adam

1 entries
  • 6835

Kaitai Shinsho (解体新書 Kyūjitai: 解體新書,(Anatomical Tables). A translation of Johan Adam Kulmus's Ontleedkundige Tafelen by Sugita Genpaku.

Tokyo, 1774.

The first translation of any Western medical text into Japanese. "Kaitai Shinsho represented the beginning of two epoch-making developments. First and most directly Gempaku's work set in motion the modern transformation of Japanese medicine, revealing not only many anatomical structures hitherto unknown in traditional [Japanese] medicine, but also and more fundamentally introducing the very notion of an anatomical approach to the body--the idea of visual inspection in dissection as the primary and most essential way of understanding the nature of the human body. Second and more generally, Kaitai Shinsho inspired the rise of Dutch studies (Rangaku) in Japan, thus giving birth to one of the most decisive influences shaping modern Japanese history, namely the study of Western languages and science" (S. Kuriyama, " Between Mind and Eye: Japanese Anatomy in the Eighteenth Century," IN: Leslie & Young [eds.] Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge [1992] 21).

Kaitai Shinsho was drawn largely from Gerard Dieten's 1773 Dutch translation of Johann Adam Kulmus's Anatomische Tabellen (1731) although its Western-style title-age was copied from Valverde's Vivae imagines partium porporis (1566), and the last four anatomical woodcuts were taken from the 1690 Dutch edition of Bidloo's anatomy. Images from Kaitai Shinsho from the website of the National Library of Medicine at this link. For further details see the entry at HistoryofInformation.com at this link.

 

 



Subjects: ANATOMY › 18th Century, COUNTRIES, CONTINENTS AND REGIONS › Japan, Japanese Medicine