[Cholera epidemics in Kanagawa].

In 1822 cholera first arrived in Japan, but it did not reach Edo, which is the old name of Tokyo, nor Kanagawa, a prefecture located next to Tokyo. During a second epidemic in 1858, 30,000 or so Japanese died and Kanagawa had a heavy toll. Cholera raged in Japan in 1877, 1879, 1882, 1886, 1890, 1891 and 1895. In 1877, an American doctor named D.B. Simmons was working at Jūzen Hospital (the previous hospital of Yokohama Medical College) in the Noge area in Yokohama, Kanagawa. He and his team tried to cure cholera patients by disinfecting the patients and their wastes with carbolic acid or phenol. They knew that isolating the patients was a good way to prevent the epidemic. As there was no hospital for infectious diseases in Kanagawa, they hurriedly built a small temporary hospital near Jūzen Hospital and named it Ota Isolation Hospital, where cholera patients were sent and treated. In 1879 as people suffered again from an epidemic Ota Hospital was replaced by Izumicho Isolation Hospital, which became a hospital for infectious diseases two decades later in 1900 and was called Yokohama Manji Hospital. Manji means to cure all. Wilhermus Hubertus van der Heyden, a Dutch doctor, worked for this hospital. The first regulation of cholera prevention in Japan was issued by the Bureau of Health of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1879. ...