Emergency Remedies for the Benefit of the Public

This medical handbook comprises three volumes, with woodblock-printed illustrations and texts. Written in simple Japanese in order to be both practical and useful, it covers information on how to remedy maladies and medical emergencies of various kinds without the help of a physician, including stroke, noxious fumes from wells and mines, cholera and other epidemics, vomiting of blood, blood in the urine, migraine, urinary obstructions, accidental cuts, wounds incurred during wartime, eye injuries, burns, frostbite, resuscitation of drowned or intoxicated people, accidental poisoning, ear infections, fractures, sexual excess, and postpartum emergencies. Many of the ailments described in the books may be treated by acupuncture and moxibustion, which entails the burning of mugwort leaves. Other remedies include uses for common Japanese plants and medicines that would have been widely available. The work is illustrated with more than one hundred and thirty woodcuts of plants, animals, fish, and insects with medicinal uses, as well as illustrations of acupuncture sites, methods of reducing fractures, anatomical details, etc.

This medical handbook was commissioned by order of the shogun Tokugawa Ieharu (reigned 1760-86), with the stated desire that practical medical knowledge be spread amongst the general population. The author/compiler, Taki Motonori (1732-1801), was a court physician. He was also known as Taki Gentoku, Rankei Taki, and Gentoku Tamba, combinations of his professional and personal names. The backing of the Shogunate supported the superb illustrations and fine materials employed in this work. The handbook's success secured the benevolent reputation of the Shogunate, as well as secured the influential position of the Taki family's private medical school (Seijukan) in Tokyo–it became a central training school for physicians to the shogun's court. This institute, whose teachings were based on Chinese medicine, was the main counterforce to the introduction of Western medicine in Japan and predominated until the second half of the 19th century.

Provenance

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Lionel Katzoff, Baltimore, MD [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 2023, by bequest.