Kanehiro Takaki

Baron Kanehiro Takaki was a Japanese naval physician and medical reformer who carried out one of the earliest controlled clinical trials in epidemiology, anticipating the discovery of vitamins by decades. Born a samurai in Hyuga Province, Takaki served as a battlefield doctor in the Boshin War before studying medicine at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in London, returning to Japan to become Director General of the Imperial Japanese Navy Medical Bureau.

At the time, beriberi (thiamine/vitamin B1 deficiency) was a catastrophic scourge in the Japanese Navy, disabling and killing thousands of sailors who ate exclusively white polished rice. Observing that Western sailors who ate meat and bread rarely contracted beriberi, Takaki hypothesized that beriberi was caused by nutritional deficiency rather than a germ. In 1884, he conducted a brilliant controlled experiment: sending two battleships on identical nine-month voyages to New Zealand. The crew on the traditional white rice diet suffered 169 cases of beriberi and 25 deaths; the crew on a diet supplemented with barley, meat, and condensed milk had only 14 cases and zero deaths. Takaki mandated the barley-rice ration across the Navy, completely eradicating beriberi. In 1881, he founded the Jikei University School of Medicine.