(03/17/00)
The Japan Surgical Society, which was established in 1899, unexpectedly will have its 100th Annual Congress in the year 2000, the turning point of the century. In commemoration, 80-yen stamps will be issued on April 11, 2000. The 100th Annual Congress with the main theme "Now for the Future," will be held in Tokyo for 3 days from April 12 to April 14. This Congress is intended to not only summarize the advances in surgery which have been made but also to build a bridge in the surgical field between the past and the 21st century.
Japan Surgical Society Commemorative Stamp
Design of the Stamp
The stamp depicts Seishu Hanaoka (1760-1835), who is one of the greatest Japanese doctors in the Edo Era, during the Samurai period, and a flower "Mandarage (datura)," which was the base of the general anesthetic "Tsusensan" developed by Seishu Hanaoka.
Seishu Hanaoka's type of medical care was a combination of Dutch medicine (surgery) and Sino-Japanese medicine (internal medicine). He went to Kyoto in 1782 to study Sino-Japanese medicine and Dutch medicine. And then, he went home and practiced medicine to succeed his father who was also a doctor. What made him a name as a doctor was a successful surgery which he performed using the oral anesthetic called "Tsusensan." This was a marvelously great work not only because surgery was performed under general anesthesia for the first time in the world in 1804, but also because aggressive treatment was used to remove the lesion beyond common knowledge of surgery at that time when surgery was limited to suturing of the wound and excision of the tumor. His first case was a patient with breast cancer. He spent about 20 years in research until he carried out surgery in this patient. His wife and mother devotedly cooperated with him. Seishu Hanaoka had the idea of "a combination of internal medicine and surgery" against the trend in medicine toward specialization as medicine advanced. He dedicated his life to research and development. He broke his own new ground in medical care, and also he was a good educator who taught more than 1,000 pupils. Seishu Hanaoka is worthy of the name the "Father of Surgery in Japan."
The building of a practical remote-operation instruction system to widely disseminate new endoscopic surgery techniques required the development of a low-priced system that transmits high-quality surgical images in real time. The Department of Surgery of Keio University's School of Medicine has constructed a network system for inter-hospital collaboration that fully uses the latest in communications technology. The system currently connects the Keio Department of Surgery and Kawasaki Municipal Hospital, and was jointly developed with PictureTel Corporation, NTT East Japan, and NTT ME.
A press announcement on this system is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. on December 21.
