VOSHN 138

<body><a href="../index.html">HOME</a><br><table summary="130"><tr><td class="etesti">130</td><td class="edate">About August 10 - 13<sup>th</sup>, 1945</td><td class="eage">29 years old at that time</td></tr><tr><td class="ei_midasi" colspan=3>Would this case possibly be caused by radioactivity?</td></tr></table><table summary="haikei"><tr><td class="bg" background="../../photo/img304.jpg"><div class="large"><p>The first symptom of <i>Genbakusho</i>(Radiation sickness) was hemorrhage.  The primary hemorrhage was a bloody bowel discharge.  So the army, at sight from the view point of the medical science and common sense to that day, firstly suspected it as dysentery.</p><p>The army ordered to send patients to EBA clinic, for EBA clinic was the epidemical ward.  So they sent the patients to us.</p><br><p>But I doubted it when I had these patients.  I examined them and noticed that their livers had swelled, and also spleen had.  All of the patients had these symptoms.  And they already got jaundice.  The process was not what we knew of dysentery.  It was different; swollen livers, swollen spleens, and jaundice.  And patients died like flies.  They died in spite of all kinds of medical treatments.</p><br><p>So I had a doubt about dysentery, and thought to check their amounts of white blood cells, and I did.  I discovered that their amounts of white blood cells were down to almost zero.</p><p>At that time I had a co-doctor, the army surgeon, Lieutenant Yanagi, who was at the department of radiology at Kyoto University.  He said,</p><p>"This case might be possibly caused by radioactivity.  For instance, the use of X-rays causes the decrease of the amount of white blood cells."</p><p>After listening to him, we suspected, for the first time, it was a special bomb, and it was even the radioactive bomb.</p></div></td></tr></table></body>