William Willis (medic)

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William Willis

William Willis (* 1837 in Maguire's Bridge , Fermanagh, Ireland ; † 1894 in Moneen , County Fermanagh , Ireland ) was a British doctor and advisor to the Japanese government.

Life

Willis was born in Maguire's Bridge, County Fermanagh, Ireland in 1837. In 1855 he began to study medicine at the Medical Faculty of the University of Glasgow ( Scotland ), where he completed preliminary and pre-clinical studies. He then moved to the University of Edinburgh . After graduating in May 1859, he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh and received a doctorate in medicine for his dissertation on ulceration ( Theory of Ulceration ). He then worked at Middlesex Hospital in London . In 1861 he got a position as a doctor in the newly established British Embassy in Edo ( Tokyo ), Japan. He began his work in May 1862 as a medical officer and employee under Sir Harry Smith Parkes . Between 1862 and 1867 he worked mainly in Yokohama . During the turmoil of the decline of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Meiji Restoration , Willis treated the British wounded in the Namamugi incident and the Kagoshima bombing .

Willis participated in the Boshin War as head of medical operations for Satsuma Province . During the Battle of Toba-Fushimi , he set up a military hospital in the Shokoku-ji Temple in Kyoto , not far from the front line. He continued his work as a medical advisor for Satsuma Province until the end of the Boshin War.

With the end of the war Willis was appointed professor and clinical director of Igakkō (later the medical faculty of the University of Tokyo ).

In 1870, Willis gave up his position to become director of the hospital and medical school in Kagoshima at the invitation of Saigo Takamori . The medical faculty of the University of Kagoshima later emerged from the institute . With the outbreak of the Satsuma rebellion in 1877, he moved back to Tokyo.

Willis returned to England in 1881 to later move to live with his longtime friend Ernest Satow in Bangkok , Siam .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. 図 說 西鄉隆盛 と 大 久保 利 通 / Saigo Takamori and Okubo Tshimichi , Tokyo 2004, ISBN 4-309-76041-4 , p. 63.