Body Drying Instrument (Hoshino Wooden Bone) (attached) Wooden Box (Important Cultural Property)

This is the world's first life-size, detailed male skeletal model, created in 1792 by Hoshino Ryoetsu, a local doctor in Hiroshima. The creator, Hoshino Ryoetsu, was a renowned local doctor in Hiroshima, but he realized that understanding the structure of the human body was important for treatment, and on April 8, 1791, with permission from the feudal domain, he received two bodies of executed people, which he dissected and studied. From one of the bodies, only the skeleton was removed, and he instructed craftsman Harada Koji to create an assembled skeletal model. Made from boxwood, this extremely detailed model even has the holes through which nerve tissue and blood vessels pass restored, and it is said to have taken 300 days to complete. In the autumn of 1798, Ryoetsu took this wooden skeleton to Edo and asked Genpaku Sugita, Gentaku Otsuki, and Hoshu Katsuragawa, known for translating "Kaitai Shinsho," to critique it. It is said that the accuracy and sophistication of the skeleton astonished them and earned them high praise. With their encouragement, Ryoetsu made another wooden skeleton and donated it to the shogunate in 1800. The shogunate named it "Shinkangi," placed it in the Medical School, and awarded Ryoetsu 30 ryo in recognition of his achievement. At a time when understanding of the structure of the human body was based only on knowledge acquired from Western medical books, the sophistication of this wooden skeleton also served to demonstrate the accuracy and high level of Western medicine, which in turn had a major impact on the introduction of Western medicine and the establishment of a scientific treatment system. Date of designation: June 8, 2004 (A replica is on display at the Medical Museum.)