Hanaoka Seishu

Hanaoka Seishu (華岡青洲, November 30,1760 – November 21,1835) was a Japanese physician, who was the first to perform surgery using general anaesthesia, almost forty years before Dr. Crawford Williamson Long operated in Danielsville, Georgia using anaesthesia.

Hanaoka performed a breast cancer operation in 1804 using a compound he called Tsusen san, based on a concotion of the plants Datura Metel, Aconitum and others.

His patient was 60 year-old Kan Aiya, whose family was beset by breast cancer - Kan Aiya being the last of kin alive.

Seishu Hanaoka learnt traditional Japanese medicine as well as Dutch-imported European surgery. The imported knowledge was very difficult for him and other Japanese physicians to learn, as few foreign medical texts were permitted brought into Japan due to the nation's self-imposed isolation policy of Sakoku.

The national isolation policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate prevented Seishu's achievements from being publicized until after the isolation ended in 1854. The delay meant anaesthesia in the rest of the world had to develop independently.

The famous Japanese author Ariyoshi Sawako wrote a novel entitled, The Doctor's Wife (Japanese 華岡青洲の妻), based on the actual life of Hanaoka Seishu mixed with a fictional conflict between his mother and his wife.

華岡青洲