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OverviewThe history of the medical and scientific debate about the etiology of the disease as it played out between diet theorists and contagionists from 1880 to 1940. In modern Japan, beriberi (or thiamin deficiency) became a public health problem that cut across all social boundaries, afflicting even the Meiji Emperor. During an age of empire building for the Japanese nation, incidence rates in the military ranged from 30 percent in peacetime to 90 percent during war. Doctors and public health officials called beriberi a ""national disease"" because it festered within the bodies of the people and threatened the health ofthe empire. Nevertheless, they could not agree over what caused the disease, attributing it to a diet deficiency or a microbe. In Beriberi in Modern Japan, Alexander R. Bay examines the debates over the etiologyof this ""national disease"" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Etiological consensus came after World War I, but the struggle at the national level to direct beriberi prevention continued, peaking during wartime mobilization. War served as the context within which scientific knowledge of beriberi and its prevention was made. The story of beriberi research is not simply about the march toward the inevitable discovery of ""the beriberi vitamin,"" but rather the history of the role of medicine in state-making and empire-building in modern Japan. Alexander Bay is assistant professor of history at Chapman University. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Professor Alexander R. Bay (Customer)Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd Imprint: University of Rochester Press Volume: v. 24 Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 0.001kg ISBN: 9781580464277ISBN 10: 1580464270 Pages: 240 Publication Date: 15 December 2012 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Out of stock The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available. Language: English Table of ContentsIntroduction: Medicine, Power, and the Rhetoric of Empire The Geography of Affliction: Beriberi in Edo and Tokyo Putting the Laboratory at the Center Beriberi: Disease of Imperial Culture Empire and the Making of a National Disease The Science of Vitamins and the Construction of Ignorance The Rice Germ Debate: Total Mobilization and the Science of Vitamins in the 1930sReviewsBay is to be commended for bringing this important episode in Japanese medical history to an English-reading audience. This book will surely find a readership both within and outside Japanese studies amid growing interest in both food culture and medical history, and it should provoke lively conversations about the methods and aims of both these fields. MONUMENTA NIPPONICA Beriberi in Modern Japan is indeed an inspiring and well-organised monograph. The author has done an excellent job linking the aetiological argument with Japanese state-building in the modern period. MEDICAL HISTORY Beriberi in Modern Japan is the first comprehensive historical monograph that focuses solely on beriberi in Japan in the English language. It makes a significant contribution to Japanese history, the history of imperialism, and the history of medicine. It is a conceptually sophisticated work that grapples with a complex topic in an intelligent and convincing manner. JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE AND ALLIED SCIENCES Bay is to be commended for bringing this important episode in Japanese medical history to an English-reading audience. This book will surely find a readership both within and outside Japanese studies amid growing interest in both food culture and medical history, and it should provoke lively conversations about the methods and aims of both these fields. MONUMENTA NIPPONICA Beriberi in Modern Japan is indeed an inspiring and well-organised monograph. The author has done an excellent job linking the aetiological argument with Japanese state-building in the modern period. MEDICAL HISTORY Author InformationTab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |