A historical vignette: red-hair medicine

Since 1650 Dutch medical doctors have played a key role in teaching western medicine in Japan. Two hundred years later, Dutch naval surgeons, trainees of the College of Army Surgeons in Utrecht, The Netherlands, became together with their Japanese students the founding fathers of the University Medical Faculties of Nagasaki, Tokyo and Osaka. The Deshima settlement surgeons Engelbert Kaempfer and Philipp Franz von Siebold (of German decent) were of great importance for our knowledge of Japan in the 18th and 19th century.