HISTORICAL CHANGES IN DIABETES THERAPY IN JAPAN

The origins of many aspects of ancient Japanese culture lie in knowled ge brought from China, and medicine was no exception. Subsequently, ho wever, in the middle of the 16th century, Portuguese missionaries intr oduced Western medicine to Japan along with Christianity. They were fo llowed by the Dutch in the 17th century, who introduced Western cultur e while carrying on commerce at their Dejima outpost in Nagasaki. This was called the Dutch school in Japan, and although there was thus con tact with Western culture and the Japanese eagerly studied Western med icine, it was not until after the establishment of the Meiji Reform go vernment in the middle of the 19th century that there was aggressive i ncorporation and acceptance of modern Western medicine in Japan. The U niversity of Tokyo was the first university in Japan. Preserved in the library of the Third Department of Internal Medicine are old records of hospitalized cases in Japan, and those documents form the basis of this review of the history of the treatment of diabetes mellitus in Ja pan.