Magyar László szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 166-169. (Budapest, 1999)
TANULMÁNYOK — ARTICLES - Ishida, Sumio: Reception of a Viennese physician in Japan. A bibliographic study on the works of Joseph Jacob Edler von Plenck (1730—1807) — Egy bécsi orvos hatása Japánban. Bibliográfiai tanulmány Joseph Jacob Edler von Plenck (1730—1807) munkásságáról
them, nevertheless, has been originally written in Dutch. Most of the books was written by German or Austrian authors with some addition of British, French an Swedish ones. Joseph Jacob Edler von Plenck was born on 28 th November 1739 in Vienna. He was apprenticed to a surgeon master, namely J. Chr. Retter, in 1753. He obtained the licence of the Surgeon's Guild in 1756, and began to train surgery at the Johannes Hospital. During the Seven Years' War he served as an army surgeon. After peace was concluded he opened his own surgeon shop and beside running it he began to publish medical and surgical tracts. In 1770 he was appointed professor of theoretical and clinical surgery at the University of Nagyszombat (Trnava) and when the University moved to Buda, in 1777, he worked there until 1783. In this year he was invited to the Joseph Academy at Vienna where he lectured in botany, chemistry and pharmacology. The institute 1 which proceded the Josephinum was established in 1775 by Queen Maria Theresia at Gumpendorf to offer 6 month courses for military surgeons. In 1781 the new Kaiser Joseph II expanded the institution to an overall medical and surgical college which all military surgeons had to attend. Tuition was increased up to two years. In 1785 the college was reorganised as a medical and surgical academy with the authority to issue master degrees in surgery, and medical doctorates. A new building was erected and was opened in November 1785. There were five professors in 1786 under the directorship of Johann Alexander Brambilla, and one of them was Plenck. Plenck lectured in botany, chemistry and pharmacology. He was subsequently ennobled in 1787, and worked in the college until 1806. He died on 24 th August in the following year, at Vienna. Plenck' s greatest gift was perhaps the clear and easily comprehensible language of his writings. He wrote several medical books, which explained medical theory precisely with explicit yet intelligible terms. The almost contemporary medical historian Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker (1795—1850) advocated his books as "(they) medical education superficial". Plenck avoided complicated explanations, philosophical and metaphysical constructions, and presented simple physical ideas. Although he was criticised for his approach, his books were welcomed at home and by a wide foreign and most of all Dutch audience who preferred practical considerations. The Japanese who certainly lacked the European philosophical background of Western medical practice valued Plenck' s pragmatic explanation above all. His books soon became popular and run in many editions. A lots of them were translated into foreign languages. They reached Japan via the Dutch translations so were translated into the Japanese from the Dutch editions. My article collects Plenck's publications including the various Latin and German editions with their Dutch and Japanese translations in the following order: Table 1 shows Plenck's original Latin and German versions. Tabic 2 shows the Dutch version and Table 3 the Japanese versions. I have put together all these tables myself. As it was officially called: Lehranstalt für die Behandlung der inneren Krankheiten und zur Erlernung der Militär Arzneimittellehre.
