Beriberi in Modern Japan (Rochester Studies in Medical History)

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1580464270

1580464270

Beriberi, a disease that we now know is caused by vitamin B1 deficiency, cut across social boundaries and threatened public health in Japan, even afflicting the Meiji Emperor. In The Beriberi Debate, author Alexander R. Bayexamines the medical and scientific debate about the etiology of the disease as it played out between diet theorists and contagionists from 1880 to 1940. The Beriberi Debate is first a story about Japanese modernization, examining the transition between Edo and Meiji era medical practices, and revealing how western science functioned within the ""civilization and enlightenment"" enterprise of nation-building. Second, this book considers thehistory of science and medicine in Japan; the story of this disease exemplifies the rise of scientific medicine and the shift from the clinic to the laboratory. The book also focuses on the nexus between medicine and power in modern Japan. Specifically, it argues that the authority wielded by the medical elite at Tokyo Imperial University was ""colonial"" in nature. The beriberi debate ended in 1926, but the competition over controlling the direction of beriberi prevention at the national level continued into the Showa era (1926-1989). In 1939, the state institutionalized a law -- the consequence of ten years of debate between National Nutrition Institute doctors and professors of medical at Tokyo Imperial University -- legalizing a form of rice milled specifically for beriberi prevention to be sold on the market. Ultimately, the history of this debate is about more than the march towards the inevitable discovery of ""the beriberi vitamin""-that is vitamin B1 or thiamine-but rather about the history of science, medicine, and power in modern Japan. Alexander Bay is assistant professor of history at Chapman University.
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1580464270

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