Background
Seishū Hanaoka was born on 23 October 1760 in Nishiyama, a village in the Kaminaka district of the province of Kii, the son of a Dutch style surgeon. His personal name was Furuu, his common name Zuiken; Seishü was his professional name.
Seishū Hanaoka was born on 23 October 1760 in Nishiyama, a village in the Kaminaka district of the province of Kii, the son of a Dutch style surgeon. His personal name was Furuu, his common name Zuiken; Seishü was his professional name.
In 1782 he went to Kyoto to study Koiho, a branch of traditional Chinesé medicine, under Yoshimasu Nangai, and also studied Dutch style surgery under Yamato Kenryu. Returning to his home in 1785, he devoted his efforts to the care of his patients, at the same time pursuing his studies in an effort to develop methods that would combine the best of both Chinese and Western medicine.
From 1802 on he served as an official physician of the fief of Kii and in 1833 became personal physician to the lord of the fief. He trained numerous disciples and contributed greatly to the development of surgical arts in Japan.
After many years of strenuous effort, he succeeded in developing a drug that would serve as a general anesthetic, which he called mafutsusan. In 1805, through the use of this anesthetic, he performed a successful operation for breast cancer, some years before a comparable use of a general anesthetic was developed in the West, thus gaining lasting fame in the annals of medical history.
