[The medical thought of Nanmei Kamei]

Nanmei Kamei (1743-1814) was a representative Confucianist and herbal doctor of the Post-Edo age in the Fukuoka han. While in the former half of his life he gained fame with his excellent Chinese poetry in the west part of Japan, in the latter half of his life he also became famous as a teacher of his son "Shoyo" (1773-1836), Tanso Hirose (1782-1856) and others. Until the present, studies of him have centered on these aspects of his work, but they have been insufficient. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the thought of Nanmei's medical science which was taught by Dokusyoan Nagatomi (1732-66) in 1761. In it we can find not only Confucian thought but also European thought. Moreover, he brought forward an eclectic position combining Chinese and European medicine which became "Ichizu ni Yoranu noga Michi," by associating frequently wuth some scholars of Dutch medicine, such as Genshun Koishi (1743-1803), Nankei Tachibana (1732-1805) and Gentaku Otuki (1757-1827). Studying the details of how he came to this thought can be, I think, a way of understanding the whole of his thought completely.