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A Scottish doctor and fingerprinting pioneer's 1885 account of his time in Japan working as a surgeon and missionary.
List of contents
Preface; 1. Introductory; 2. First impressions of Yokohama; 3. A run on the Tokio railway; 4. Street scenes; 5. Life in Tokio; 6. A consultation in the hills; 7. A consultation in the hills (cont.); 8. Mitake San; 9. Pilgrimage to Fugi the peerless; 10. Pilgrimage to Fugi the peerless (cont.); 11. In a cottage by the sea; 12. Trip to the tomb of Iyeyasu; 13. Nagasaki and the inland sea; 14. Ten days on the Tokaido; 15. Japanese philosophy of flowers; 16. The language of Nipon; 17. Schools; 18. A glimpse of the land of neglected education; 19. My garden and its guests; 20. Japanese art in relation to nature; 21. The philosophy of heaven and earth in a nutshell; 22. Homes of the people; 23. How the Japanese amuse themselves; 24. Japanese manners and customs, negative and positive; 25. General survey.
About the author
Doctor, missionary, and scientist Henry Faulds was born on June 1, 1843, and died on March 24, 1930. He is famous for creating fingerprinting. The family that Faulds was born into was not very wealthy. He was born in Beith, North Ayrshire. He had to quit school when he was 13 and go work as a clerk in Glasgow to help support his family. When he was 21, he chose to go to Glasgow University and study math, logic, and the classics at the Faculty of Arts. He later went to Anderson's College to study medicine and finished with a license to practice as a doctor. When Faulds graduated, he went to work for the Church of Scotland as a medical missionary. He was sent to British India in 1871 and worked at a hospital for the poor in Darjeeling for two years. The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland sent him a letter of appointment on July 23, 1873, telling him to start a medical mission in Japan. In September of that year, he married Isabella Wilson, and in December, the couple left for Japan. In 1874, Faulds opened the first mission in Japan that spoke English. It had a hospital and a place for Japanese medical students to learn. He helped Japanese doctors learn about Joseph Lister's ways of keeping wounds clean.
Summary
The Scottish doctor Henry Faulds (1843–1930) is remembered for his role in the development of fingerprinting as a forensic tool. This 1885 work, recording his time as a surgeon in the mission hospital at Tsukiji, near Tokyo, is an engaging account of Japanese life, customs, geography and natural history.
