The Lister Hill Center's Communications Engineering Branch has added Hanaoka Seishu's Surgical Casebook http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/flash/hanaoka/hanaoka.html to its growing collection of virtual books and manuscripts available for thumbing through online via Turning the Pages http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/intro.htm. The virtual volume is also available on kiosks in the Library's Visitor Center (Building 38A, first floor) and the History of Medicine Division Reading Room (Building 38, first floor), and marks the continued collaboration of the Library's Lister Hill Center and the History of Medicine Division.

Hanaoka Seishu's Surgical Casebook is a magnificently illustrated manuscript depicting the likenesses of the men and women who came to Hanaoka for treatment in early 19th-century Japan. It is the first in the collection in which users will turn the pages according to Japanese custom, right to left.

Hanaoka Seishu (1760-1835) was a pioneering Japanese surgeon who was the first to use general anesthesia to remove tumors from cancer patients. The images in the Surgical Casebook are colorful, often charming, and depict quite graphically the medical and surgical problem to be treated.

Hanaoka studied both traditional Chinese-style medicine and Western-style surgical techniques. At age 25, he took over the family business and began to practice an eclectic style of medicine that combined these two traditions. He was greatly concerned with his inability to treat cancer patients, and over a period of 20 years he developed an herbal concoction he called "mafutsusan," made up of several highly toxic plants. It did not include opium derivatives which European doctors were only beginning to identify as anesthetics. The narcotic effects of Hanaoka's anesthetic could last as long as 24 hours, allowing him to surgically remove many different kinds of tumors which previously had been inoperable.

Images from the manuscript were selected and curatorial text was written by Dr. Ann Jannetta, Professor Emerita of History at the University of Pittsburgh. The descriptive text can be viewed if one clicks the "T" in the upper left corner of the virtual book page. This image shows a young woman on the left with a tumor of the jaw and on the right is a man in a red robe identified as a Buddhist priest from Ise Province.