Tôyô Yamawaki

Background

Tôyô Yamawaki was born in 1705. His personal name w'as Hisanori; Toyo was his professional name. He was the eldest son of Shimizu Ritsuan, a native of Kameyama in Tarnba who was residing in Kyoto.

Education

In his youth he studied medicine under Yamawaki Genshu, who had also been his father’s teacher, and in 1726 became the adopted son of Genshu and carried on his adopted father’s medical practice, Later, under Goto Konzan, he studied koiho, or traditional Chinese medicine, particularly that associated with the Chin and T ’ang dynasties (roughly, the period from the fourth to the tenth centuries).

Career

In 1754 he joined Kosugi Genteki and other physicians in carrying out dissections on the bodies of executed criminals in the suburbs of Kyoto, and through these studies discovered that the traditional theories pertaining to the internal organs were in error at various points.

He conducted further dissections on the bodies of executed criminals and gained increasing fame, but died in 1762 at the age of fifty-seven.

Achievements

• Through his researches, he contributed greatly to the develoji- ment and spread of koiho type medicine and in time came to be numbered among the four leading experts in that field.

Works

• Other Work

  • In 1759 he produced a work entitled Y,oshi in which he described the true structure of the internal organs of the human body, the first of its kind in Japanese medical history and a contribution of immeasurable importance.

  • In addition to the Zoshi, his writings include the Yojuin isoku and the Saiseiyogen.