The surgeon’s acupuncturist: Philipp Franz von Siebold’s encounter with Ishizaka Sōtetsu and nineteenth century Japanese acupuncture

Abstract

In contrast to the first European descriptions of acupuncture by Willem Ten Rhjine and Engelbert Kaempfer in the last decades of the seventeenth century, Philipp Franz von Siebold’s notes did not receive much attention upon his return to Holland in 1828. Siebold’s interest in acupuncture was different from that of his predecessors, as he was not interested in acupuncture in general – as Rhjine and Kaempfer were – but in the theories of Ishizaka Sōtetsu 石坂宗哲, an early nineteenth century Japanese acupuncturist who attempted to bridge the gap between Western and Sino-Japanese medicine. In this essay, I first reconstruct Siebold’s encounter with Ishizaka using rare materials held by Leiden University library, Leiden National Museum of Ethnology, and the Ishizaka family. Then, I review the new developments happening in Japanese acupuncture at the turn of the nineteenth century. I show how Ishizaka applied his knowledge on Western anatomy to acupuncture, contending that it gave him new methodological and epistemological tools to reconstruct acupuncture theories into his own theoretical framework. This allowed him to place himself in the debates that flourished in Japanese medicine since the late seventeenth century. Finally, I examine the reasons of Siebold’s interest for Ishizaka’s theories and his contribution to their diffusion in Europe.