Health and content were written in the face of man, woman, and child [in the countryside near Hakodate]. Yet I saw the traces of many diseases—tinea, scabies, impetigo, and small-pox, for vaccination is at best very imperfectly understood even in Yedo, and hardly at all here. Perhaps the most common infirmity in Japan is blindness. Medical men account for it by the custom of shaving the forehead to the crown, and going exposed to the sun and cold.
Japan, the Amoor, and the Pacific (1861)
The healing art in Japan was until lately, much as it still is in the Chinese empire, a simple hygienic treatment, with the favourite operations of acupuncture, moxa-burnings and frictions; but subsequently many Dutch works on medicine have been translated, and that science has entered upon a wider field, which the presence of medical men at the consular ports will do much to extend. In simple surgery they seem to be very expert.
Japan, the Amoor, and the Pacific (1861)
Had the reader been in Japan some fifty years ago, he would have found nearly all the sick people in the country in the hands of physicians of the Chinese school of medical science. Here and there a few hardy spirits had acquired a knowledge of Dutch in order to wade through treatises on surgery and pharmacy; but they were few and far between—as rare, so the Japanese would say, “as the stars in the sky at dawn.” To-day, every practising physician or surgeon throughout the country has received a more or less complete training in Western science, and some of Japan’s greatest triumphs have been won in the hospital and by the sick-bed.
There are still a few survivals of the old régime. Herbs and roots possessing medicinal qualities are still in request among the country people, and acupuncture is practised, though it is now considered as one of the supplementary accomplishments of the shampooer rather than of the physician. In other things the Japanese patient receives very much the same treatment as he would in England.
Every-day Japan (1909)
In one important point we found that all ordinary Japanese hospitals differ from English, namely, in that of visitors, who are allowed all day, and all night too, if they desire! It must be confessed our astonishment and amusement were very great, when we saw each patient surrounded by relations or friends who were smoking and drinking tea as if they were in their own houses.
Japan As We Saw It (Bickersteth) (1893)
In the evening of our day at Hakoni we call in to our tea house an ‘ā-ma,’ or shampooer, and some of us go through the ordeal of being shampooed, which in China and Japan is the almost universal recipe for weariness or fatigue, and constantly adopted by the natives before retiring to rest. The shampooers in Japan are nearly all blind, the science being one which a blind man can acquire as easily as a man with eyes. According to our experience, the process consists of the man tweaking the shoulders, poking the ribs, pinching the arms, playing a gentle ‘tattoo’ on the legs, fillipping the fingers and toes, and generally administering a mild ‘kneading.’ The result seems to be ‘nil,’ but many Europeans declare that the operation is a very soothing and soporific one.
Round the World in 1870 (1872)
I may also mention the “moxa” treatment, a peculiar and very popular remedy for rheumatism and other muscular aches. The setting fire to these little cones made of mugwort fibre (Artemisia vulgaris, var. latifolia) is such a general custom amongst the Japanese that one rarely finds a Japanese whose dark skin does not show sundry symmetrically arranged white marks, left by cauterizing. These little burning cones, set on the skin, slowly glimmer to ashes without causing any pain worth mentioning, and leave only an insignificant mark. They are chiefly applied during the rainy season as a preventive against fever, and one often sees carriers and riksha-coolies during their rest at a tea-house set moxa along their shanks and calves as a preservative against weakness and fatigue.
Japan As I Saw It (1912)
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