[A review of biographical studies on Goroji Nakagawa, a Japanese pioneer of Jennerian vaccination].

The first detailed biographical study of Goroji Nakagawa, a Japanese pioneer of Jennerian vaccination, dates back to 1885, when Yotoku Onuki wrote his paper on Nakagawa after his field survey in the Matsumae district. Since then information about him gradually began to be compiled by medical historians as well as local historians. Tatsuo Abe, a pediatrician, studied about Nakagawa in depth to publish a monograph entitled "Goroji Nakagawa and the Introduction of Vaccination" in 1943, on the 120th anniversary of the first trial of vaccination by him. This marked a great progress in the biographical study of Nakagawa. At the beginning of the 1960s Sichiro Murayama of Juntendo University identified one of the two Russian books that had been brought back by Nakagawa from Siberia and he translated it into modern Japanese. At that time the author made extensive bibliographical studies on various manuscripts of "Tonka Hiketu," a classical Japanese translation of the Russian book by Sadayosi Baba in 1820. The author also made a wide field survey on burial records and gravestones of the Nakagawa's family at Matsumae and Kawauchi where Nakagawa was born and died, and elucidated that Nakagawa was buried at Hogenji temple at Matsumae. The most recent advance was observed in the beginning of the Heisei period, when the author edited and published three volumes of "Hokkaido Iji Siryo Shusei" (Collected Papers on Medical Culture in Hokkaido) in which almost all the papers and manuscripts concerning Nakagawa which would be very beneficial for investigators were reproduced. During the past 120 years since 1885 numerous educational and medical historical papers about Nakagawa have appeared for the public as well as medical historians; however, most of them have conveyed incorrect information of his biography, resulting from repeated citation of inadequate and erroneous references.