Kusomoto Ine, the 1st woman-doctor in Japan.

Abstract

Kusumoto Ine was the first woman to practice Western medicine in Japan. Born in 1827, she will live at a turning point in the history of the country: the end of the Edo period (1600-1868) and the beginning of the Meiji period (1868-1912). Her birth, as mysterious and romantic as the-rest of her existence, has unleashed the imagination of writers, feuilleton, Japanese manga artists, so much so that - in the burgeoning romances more or less vapid who made her today a popular heroine - the search for authentic life data is sometimes difficult. The socio-cultural status of Japan in the nineteenth century - which provides information on the status of women - reveals a much less romantic story, but still as prodigious. In France, where his father, Philipp von Siebold, a German physician, great Traveller and marvelous botanist, is well known, a biography Kusumoto Ine had never yet been made.