Sagen Ishizuka
Biography. He was born into a modest family of traditional physicians, and continued their tradition by going into medicine. Having little wealth, he ended up teaching himself basic techniques while working as a language teacher. By the age of 16 he had already learned the Dutch language, essential to study Western medicine in Japan. (He later also successfully mastered German, French and English.) During the next seven years he taught himself anatomy, botany, chemistry, physics and astronomy. At the age of 24, he enlisted in the army as Imperial Japanese trainee physician. At 31, he received the degree  of military pharmacist and later of "military physician". He remained in the army for 22 years, retiring with the high degree of "chief military pharmacist". This experience was very useful, since he was confronted in practice with all sorts of diseases and injuries. (He participated in the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877 and First Sino-Japanese War of 1894.) During his professional career, he was disappointed by the western medical system and became gradually convinced that traditional medicine (which often relied on prescribing a simple change of diet) was more effective. He suffered from eczema from childhood and chronic nephritis that  conventional medicine could not heal. He developed a theory that the secret to health and healing was to strengthen the body from the inside from a balanced regime. The scheme was, however, almost the equivalent of the traditional Japanese diet. When he returned to civilian society, he opened a free clinic and began to practice exclusively using his own method. With the support of leading figures (members of the Japanese imperial family, consuls, and other relationships acquired thanks to his high military rank) he quickly became successful. The demands increased so much that consultations had to be limited to 100  per day; his popularity became such that he got mail with incomplete addresses such as "For the Anti-Doctor Doctor, Tokyo", "Doctor Vegetables, Tokyo" or "Doctor Daikon, Tokyo" (as he often prescribed daikon). In 1907 he created the association "Shokuyō" (食養 "Food for Health") to spread and perpetuate his method. Ishizuka's theory of health and nutrition. Ishizuka’s theory is based on the following principles: Ishizuka collected his studies in a work called "A Chemical Theory of Nutrition on Health and Longevity", which was published in 1897 in Japan but has never been translated into any Western language. Sagen