The history of Western medicine in the late Tokugawa period is usually depicted as a prelude to modern medicine. By comparison to the Western medical science that was systematically introduced in the Meiji period, the Tokugawa study of Western learning is often seen as a hopelessly backward exercise in which inadequately equipped Japanese doctors valiantly struggled to make sense of outdated Dutch knowledge. In contrast, this book argues that the study of Western medicine was a dynamic activity that brought together doctors from all over the country in efforts to effect social change. Western...