A Focus on Rural Medicine / 日本農村医学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

At the 47th General Meeting of the Japanese Association of Rural Medicine, I had the opportunity to present my experiences in rural medicine together with the philosophy developed through these settlement activities.<BR>My involvement in rural medicine started at the end of the 1950s after working as a medical student in a farming village in Gifu prefecture, Japan. Also, during my internship I worked with people living on the boart in the Sumida river, Tokyo.<BR>Through these settlement activities I found my mission as a physician.<BR>That is, the physician must learn the patterns of human living and the circumstances surrounding them to find the key to medical philosophy.<BR>At the meeting, I also presented additional experiences and opinions based on practicing medicine at the front-lines of community health care. Even if social circumstances change, the philosophy of medicine based on my rural medical activities will not. I believe we should create more balanced farming areas (with safe foods, pure natural resources, and a symbiosis between urban and rural areas) and should support these ideas by establishing a rural community health care program.