Hanaoka Seishu

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Hanaoka Seishu (華岡青洲, November 30, 1760 – November 21, 1835) was a Japanese physician and was the first to perform surgery using general anaesthesia, almost forty years before Dr. Crawford Williamson Long operated in Danielsville, Georgia using anaesthesia.

He performed a breast cancer operation in 1804 using a compound he called Tsusen san, based on the plants Datura metel and Aconitum and others.

His patient was 60 year old, Kan Aiya, whose family was beset by breast cancer - Kan Aiya being the last of kin alive.

Seishu Hanaoka learnt traditional Japanese medicine as well as Dutch-imported European surgery. The imported knowledge was very difficult for him and other Japanese physicians to learn, as no foreign medicine books were allowed to be brought to Japan.

The national isolation policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate prevented Seishu's breakthrough in being discovered until after the isolation ended (1603 - 1868).

This unfortunate factor meant that anaesthesia in the rest of the world had to develop independently.

The famous Japanese author Ariyoshi Sawako wrote a novel The Doctor's Wife (Japanese 花岡青洲の妻), based on the actual life of Hanaoka Seishu with a fictional conflict between his mother and his wife.