Kanehiro Takaki and the control of beriberi in the Japanese Navy

Kanehiro Takaki (1849–1920) was a Japanese naval medical officer at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. At that time, beriberi – a feared and often fatal disease – was prevalent throughout Japan and in many Southeast Asian countries.1,2 Takaki used an epidemiological approach – which was then unfamiliar in Japan – to study the disease. He showed that it was caused by a nutritional deficiency and demonstrated how it could be prevented and treated. Takaki’s research led to the eradication of the disease in the Japanese Navy more than 30 years before the specific cause of beriberi was shown to be a deficiency of vitamin B1. Apart from his epidemiological research, Takaki worked hard to promote what we would today call ‘patient-centred’ medicine. In 1881, he founded the Sei-I-Kwai Koshujo (the Sei-I-Kwai Medical Training School), not only to impart medical knowledge and skills but also to teach students to empathize with patients, an approach continued to this day in the Jikei University School of Medicine. The following year Takaki founded a charitable hospital – the Yushi Kyoritsu Tokyo Byoin – to serve the poor, and this was the predecessor of today’s Jikei University Hospital. Recognizing the key role played by nurses in good healthcare, Takaki also founded the first nursing school in Japan – the Kangofu Kyoiku-jo (now the Jikei Training School for Nurses).