Professor Yoshinori Tashiro’s contribution to Orthopedic Surgery

specialists there was already a desire for the Japanese to develop medicine themselves. At that time there were two professors of surgery at Tokyo University: Prof. Julius Karl Scriba (1848–1905), who had been invited to Japan from Germany by the Japanese government in 1881, and Prof. Sankichi Sato (1857–1943), who graduated from Tokyo University in 1882 and studied surgery under Prof. Scriba’s guidance. He then went to Germany for further surgical study and returned to Japan in 1887. Yoshinori Tashiro studied surgery for 1 year under Prof. Sato and for the next 5 years under Prof. Scriba. He published a Japanese version (Tirumansu-geka-sho) of Tillmanns’s Textbook of Surgery (Hermann Tillmanns, 1844–1927) in 1894. In 1899, the Faculty of Medicine of Tokyo University decided to establish a department of orthopedic surgery, and Tashiro was nominated to be the person in charge. In 1900 he was sent by the Ministry of Education to Germany and Austria to study this field. He learned general orthopedic surgery, bone and joint pathology, orthopedic physical therapy, tendon surgery, and the treatment of pes varus and congenital dislocation of the hip under Julius Wolff at Berlin University, Ernest Ziegler at Freiburg University, Oscar Vulpius at Heidelberg University, Albert Hoffa at Wurzburg University, Adolf Lorenz in Vienna, and others. In those days, the environment of orthopedics in Europe was vigorous. In 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen of Wurzburg University had discovered X-rays, and their clinical application to patients had already begun. In 1901, a new orthopedic surgery society was founded, having previously been part of the German Surgical Society. Tashiro was able to experience these energetic and positive changes in Europe at first hand. Tashiro returned to Japan in 1904. He performed operations as an associate professor of surgery and also treated the wounded of the Russo-Japanese War (1904– 1905) at Toyama Army Hospital. On April 5, 1906, the Department of Orthopedic Surgery was established and