Namamugi Incident
Among his students was Takaki Kanehiro, the first man to prove that beriberi was connected to malnutrition, and the founder of Japan's first private medical college. During the unsettled years at the end of the Tokugawa bakufu and Meiji Restoration, Willis treated the British nationals wounded in the Namamugi Incident and the Bombardment of Kagoshima.