[Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto and Chloroform Anesthesia]

Isoroku Yamamoto (1884-1943) who was on the Nisshin, an armored cruiser, received injuries to the left hand and right calf on May 27, 1905, at the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War. Three days later, he was admitted to the Sasebo Naval Hospital to undergo emergency amputations of the index and middle fingers of the left hand under chloroform anesthesia. He was, then, evacuated to the Yokosuka Naval Hospital, one of the naval background hospitals, and approximately, a month later, he received a muscle grafting taken from the left gluteal region. The procedure was most likely performed under chloroform anesthesia because chloroform was the only general anesthetic that the hospitals prepared. This grafting was not described in most of his biographies. In December 1916, he suffered from acute appendicitis and he was brought to the University of Tokyo Hospital, where an appendectomy was undertaken by Professor Tsugushige Kondo using chloroform ansthesia because Kondo had a great dislike for spinal anesthesia.