25Vaccination that began in Saga

This drawing is of the vaccination administered in Saga Castle. In 1846, the Saga Domain suffered a severe epidemic of smallpox. The 10th lord Nabeshima Naomasa upon learning that the bovine smallpox vaccination is effective in preventing the disease, ordered the vaccines to be imported from the Netherlands and inoculated his son, then-called Junichiro and later Naohiro, in August of 1849. With this success, the practice of vaccination spread throughout the domain, and later, all over Japan. Soon after, medical education in the Saga Domain switched from Chinese medicine to western medicine, and Saga became the first domain in the nation to establish a medical licensing system. The current Saga Prefectural Hospital is called Koseikan; this name was handed down from the medical school of the Edo Period.