Page 9
The Development of Scientific Medicine and its Impact on Society in Taiwan, 1865 to 1945

Then every year...

1904 4500 cases 3574 died (mortality rate about 75%)

Then every year gradually diminishing...

Until 1917 7 cases 7 died

No more cases after 1917. That was a triumph through hygiene and rat control.

I was working in a hospital in South Fukien from 1940 to 1946. For 3 succesive years 1942, 1943, & 1944 cases of bubonic plague occurred in the late spring of each year and were admitted to hospital - about For reasons of trade and kinship there was always much coming and going across the straits between Fukien and Taiwan. The Japanese were highly sensitive about quarantine regulations towards incoming ships and junks.

(b) Hospital Construction. Ten well-built, well-staffed, adequately equipped hospitals were built, one in each large city – light, clean, airy and earthquake proof. A large Central government hospital was built in Taipei, completed in 1897. In 1899 a medical college was started in connection with this hospital. The first Taiwanese medical students graduated in 1902. The medical college continued to evolved into the faculty of medicine of the Taipei Imperial University in 1936. At the end of the Japanese era, 1,888 Taiwanese students had graduated from this one and only medical college in the island.

The Japanese commitment to scientific medicine was total. Bacteriologists, pathologist, specialists in all branches of clinical medicine, all highly trained in Japan, contributed to the total medial care programme, to teaching and to research. The Formosan Medical Association (retaining the classical name "Formosa") was formed in 1902. The first issue of the Journal of the Formosan Medical Association appeared in the same year. Of course increasing numbers of Taiwanese graduate doctors played a part in these services.

(c) My third example is the management of opium addiction.

Opium smoking had, presumably, been brought from the mainland of China by the emigrants and was widely practiced, especially amongst the wealthier classes. Dr. Myers, one of the community doctors in Taiwan observed that, in time, it brings "decaying of the mind an d enfeeblement of the body".



Previous |4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|Next
Sponsored by the Chuan Lyu Foundation
© 1997 - 2008 The Chuan Lyu Foundation All Rights Reserved