was a Japanese surgeon and

Rangaku ''Rangaku'' (Kyūjitai: , ), and by extension , is a body of knowledge developed by Japan through its contacts with the Dutch enclave of Dejima, which allowed Japan to keep abreast of Western technology and medicine in the period when the countr ...

expert living during the late

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

and early

Meiji era The was an Japanese era name, era of History of Japan, Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feu ...

. He was the first surgeon to give a

cowpox Cowpox is an infectious disease caused by Cowpox virus (CPXV). It presents with large blisters in the skin, a fever and swollen glands, historically typically following contact with an infected cow, though in the last several decades more often ...

vaccine in Japan, between 1858 and 1860.Deal, William E. (2007) ''Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan''. Oxford University Press, USA.. Itō Genboku's offices were later expanded into the foundations of the incipient University of Tokyo Institute of Medical Science.

References

Japanese surgeons Japanese immunologists People of the Edo period People of the Meiji era 1801 births 1871 deaths {{Japan-med-bio-stub