Academic Society Devoting to Comprehensive Understanding of Man-Environment-Health Communications

• Published in: Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine Vol. 12; no. 1; pp. 1 - 2
• Main Author: Morimoto, Kanehisa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese; English
• Published: Dordrecht THE JAPANESE SOCIETY FOR HYGIENE 2007; BioMed Central; Springer-Verlag
• Subjects: Environmental health
• ISSN: 1342-078X; 1347-4715
• DOI: 10.1007/BF02898185

The Japanese Society for Hygiene is one of the oldest academic societies in medicine of Japan. More than one hundred years ago, Drs. Rintarou MORI, Masanori OGATA, Shibasaburo KITASATO, and Kanehiro TAKAKI, together with other academic and political leaders, made their best efforts in establishing the field of hygiene in the early MEIJI ERA, around the time when Professors Pettenkofer and Koch established the departments of hygiene at Munich University and Berlin University, respectively. These were all the triggering movements towards the world-wide development of modern social medicine. The scope of the Society's activity now covers all the important fields of social medicine including clinical and preventive practice in community medicine. Those main categories are, 1) basic research and risk management against infectious diseases, 2) health research on biological effects and their risk prevention of environmental toxicants, and 3) basic preventive research on lifestyle-related ill-health effects. The developing countries are still suffering from prevailing infectious diseases and severe environmental pollutions whilst the developed countries have serious problems with increasing incidences of and death rates from cbronic lifestyle-related diseases such as cancers, circulatory and metabolic diseases.