This marvelous book reconstructs the medical world of turn-of-the-century Tokyo. Susan L. Burns deftly balances attention to individual experiences of health and disease with comprehensive overviews of state policy and professional formation at a crucial moment in the making of the modern world. This book is indispensable for anyone concerned with the history and politics of Tokyo and urban public health. -- Mary Augusta Brazelton, University of Cambridge Susan L. Burnss wonderful Mapping Medical Modernity lives up to its ambitious title, combining an erudite survey of the evolution of public health ideas and institutions over the course of the nineteenth century with a granular study of the distribution and treatment of syphilis, mental health, and cholera in Tokyo. -- David L. Howell, Harvard University Mapping Medical Modernity offers a socio-spatial history of health governance in Tokyo. Susan L. Burns explores the interplay of the built environment, administrative efforts to manage disease, legal regulation and policing, and the pathogens themselves. She reveals how efforts to control the disease too easily turned into criticism of the poor and reinforcement of social hierarchies. Combining innovative historical methods with textured accounts of lived experience, Burns illuminates the complex entanglement of medicine, governance, and urban life in the making of modern Tokyo. -- Amy Borovoy, Princeton University
