Naika hiroku 內科秘錄 [Diagnosis and Treatment of Various Diseases]

One finely hand-colored port. of the author & many full-page woodcuts (mostly hand-colored). 14 vols. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. block-printed title labels on upper covers, stitched. [Mito]: Jijuntei zo 自準亭藏 et al., 1867.




First edition. Honma (1804-72), a member of a distinguished family of physicians, studied under Phillip Franz von Siebold, who had brought many printed Western works on medicine and surgery to Japan. Honma also learned anesthesia from Seishu Hanaoka, the first Japanese physician to master this specialty. In Nagasaki, Honma studied vaccination. Honma established his practice in Tokyo, was physician to the local aristocracy, and became a professor of medicine. Not only an accomplished surgeon, Honma was deeply knowledgeable about internal medicine. He was one of the first physicians in Japan to make public his techniques and procedures. Hitherto, medical knowledge was kept closely guarded as family secrets for successive generations of doctors.


This is Honma's great work on internal medicine in which he provides more than one hundred case histories. The most notable aspect of this book is the author's description of Western vaccination in Vol. 14. Each step of the treatment is described and beautifully illustrated in a series of well-colored full-page woodcuts, depicting the day-by-day progress of the procedure. Honma's use of vaccination met with great resistance because the general population feared being turned into cows by use of the cowpox virus.


This book describes the anatomy of the body, circulation and the pulse, many types of ailments ranging from gout to fevers to arthritis, dysentery, infectious diseases, heart diseases, paralysis, pneumonia, asthma, spitting of blood, jaundice (finely illustrated), liver diseases, frostbite, psychological illnesses, and gynecological and pediatric diseases.


The author describes many pharmacological recipes. The illustrations are clearly based on earlier Dutch medical books.


Very good set. Occasional dampstaining. Some worming, touching a few images and carefully repaired.