Engelbert Kaempfer
Beginning in 1870, the Meiji government of Japan hired a series of German medical specialists to establish a modern medical school system in Japan. At the time, German medicine was considered to be the most advanced in Europe, with most medical textbooks and research papers published in the German language. Western medicine had been introduced into Edo period Japan by German-speaking physicians such as Engelbert Kaempfer and Philipp Franz von Siebold, and the German physician Erwin Balz was serving as the personal physician to Emperor Meiji.