Elaboration of the Visual Pathways from the Study of War-Related Cranial Injuries: The Period from the Russo-Japanese War to World War I.

As a result of the wars in the early 20th century, elaboration of the visual pathways was greatly facilitated by the meticulous study of visual defects in soldiers who had suffered focal injuries to the visual cortex. Using relatively crude techniques, often under difficult wartime circumstances, investigators successfully mapped key features of the visual pathways. Studies during the Russo- Japanese War (1904-1905) by Tatsuji Inouye (1881-1976) and during World War I by Gordon Holmes (1876-1965), William Lister (1868-1944), and others produced increasingly refined retinotopic maps of the primary visual cortex, which were later supported and refined by studies during and after World War II. Studies by George Riddoch (1888-1947) during World War I also demonstrated that some patients could still perceive motion despite blindness caused by damage to their visual cortex and helped to establish the concept of functional partitioning of visual processes in the occipital cortex.

[Viktor Borisovich von Gyubbenet--a military physician, a surgeon and a social activist].

The current article is dedicated to a talented surgeon, an organizer of military health care, an extraordinary personality and a public figure--Doctor of Medicine, a privy councilor Victor Borisovich von Guebbenet. A talent of von Gyubbenea as a doctor-surgeon and an organizer of the surgical help on theater of war was especially brightly shown during two big military conflicts of the beginning of the XX century--the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and the First World War I (1914-1918). In the first case doctor von Gyubbenet, being a surgeon of the 3rd Siberian corps successfully manage the activity of military-medical divisions and establishments of Port Arthur garrison. In the second military conflict Victor Borisovich as a doctor and an organizer headed sanitary part of armies of the Western front and successfully directed a medical support of armies of the front since 1915 and until the end of war.

Hygienic governance and military hygiene in the making of imperial Japan, 1868-1912.

This article explores how the Meiji medical authorities applied Western medicine-derived hygienic ideas and plans to build up imperial Japan. Although several medical historians have recently begun to investigate the important role that Western medicine played Japan's modern nation-building, there has been little historical analysis of how hygiene administration influenced military hygiene in this process. While some prominent historians of modern Japan have discussed the impact of Dutch medicine on the rise of Western learning during the Tokugawa era (1603-1868) or have placed it within the context of Japan's colonial expansion into Taiwan or China, they have not analyzed the process by which hygiene administration contributed to the development of military hygiene in the making of imperial Japan. In this paper, I will investigate why and how Japan's medical leaders adopted German medicine and the British hygiene administration system, and pursued their application to Meiji Japan's military forces.

[Shomatsu Yokoyama, a physiologist who refused to conduct experiments on living human bodies].

This article introduces the life of Shomatsu Yokoyama (1913-1992), a physiologist and military doctor, to the reader. During the Sino-Japanese war, Yokoyama disobeyed orders given by his superior officer to conduct inhumane medical experiments on humans. Not only in Unit 731, but also in other units, many military doctors were involved in medical crimes against residents of the areas invaded by the Japanese Army. Inhumane living-body experiments and vivisections were widely conducted at that time. There were, however, a small number of researchers who did not follow the orders to perform human-body experiments. Highlighting the life of such a rare researcher for the purpose of ascertaining the reason for his noncompliance with the order will provide us with insights on medical ethics. When Yokoyama was a student, his teacher, Professor Rinya Kawamura, informed him that he had been requested by the army to conduct special experiments. The remuneration for conducting such experiments was over 10 times more than the research fund allocated to the professor. Kawamura declined the request on the grounds that accepting it was against humanity. Kawamura warned Yokoyama that he might face the same situation in the future and asked Yokoyama to mark his words. Yokoyama was called to Ko-1855 Unit in 1944 and ordered to carry out living-body experiments by his superior officer. He disregarded the order, remembering Kawamura's words. As a result, he was dispatched to the dangerous frontlines. This article explores why Yokoyama was able to disobey the order to conduct inhumane experiments while shedding light on his personal background and his relationship with Rinya Kawamura. This article chronicles the life of one medical researcher who followed the dictates of his conscience during and after the war.

Gendered dis/ability: perspectives from the treatment of psychiatric casualties in Russia's early twentieth-century wars.

The historiography on disability and gender in the West suggests an association between 'masculine' ability and 'feminine' disability. In contrast, Russia's early twentieth-century literature on the treatment of mentally-ill soldiers reveals a broader range of choices in ascriptions of gender and dis/ability. While conceptions of 'masculine' ability and 'feminine' disability existed in Russia, these two permutations of gender and dis/ability were neither strictly opposed in professional medical literature, nor were they the only available options. Physicians and patients most intimately associated with psychiatric casualties in Russia's wars also considered certain individuals to be masculine and disabled, as well as feminine and able. This article discusses and interprets these issues and concludes by exploring some of the possible political and cultural reasons why understandings of gender and disability proved more flexible in Russia than in the West.