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The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the "Opening" of Japan.

Article Excerpt
The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the "Opening" of Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. xviii + 245 pages. ISBN 9780804754897, $45.00 cloth. Ann Jannetta. 2007.

This clearly written, concise book traces the nineteenth century transmission of medical technology, Jennerian vaccination against smallpox, from England to "isolationist" Tokugawa Japan, and then from the latter's periphery, Nagasaki, to the Shogunal capital of Edo. Medical historian Ann Jannetta argues that Japanese physicians, who had been exposed to Western medical knowledge since the late eighteenth century, paved the way to Japan's political "opening" in 1854, which prepared for "Japan's rapid and successful modernization" (p. 2) in the twentieth century. These medical doctors, who forged a professional network through the diffusion of vaccination, played a major role in building modern Japan's medical education and public health system.

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