Yoshitora: Method for Curing Measles (hashika yojo-den) (Sold)

Artist: Utagawa Yoshitora
Title: Method for Curing Measles (hashika yojo-den)
Date: 1862/4 (4th month of Bunkyû 2/Dog Year)

A woman nurses a boy who sits on the futon mattress. On the top left Shôki the Devil-Queller, stands as a symbol of a curer as well as strength of a boy . At his bedside by a pillow there are two gifts. The boy has rashes on his face and hands, and wears a gown with a curative tarayô leaf printed on it. It is interesting to note the way that print publishers used the epidemic as a financial oppurtunity... The text begins with a sentence: “If you hang this print in the house, the measles will remain light.” It further describes the symptom of measles, then lists the things considered good for the patient and the things that the patient should not do or eat. It warns that during the first three days the patient feels sick at the stomach, thirsty and has diarrhoea. If he drinks or eats, he vomits, and the body becomes numb. It gets really bad. Since it is summer the illness gets worse and suffers from fever if the patient does not keep to the proper method of curing. It lists things beneficial for the patient: dried gourd shavings, carrots, white gourd melons, radishes, dried strips of radish, liliy roots, pickles in miso, rice flour dumplings, dried noodles, katakuri starch, green beans, yuba from soyabeans milk, old pickled radish, spindel-shaped bladder leaves, and sea weeds, etc. Activities advised not to do are: for 75 days no sexual intercourse, for 5 days no bath, for 75 days no moxacautery, for 50 days no hair shaving. Not to eat: buckwheat noodles, river fish, dried plums, burdocks, pumpkins, broad beans, salt rice-bran paste for pickling, dried shiitake mushroom, leek, corns, devil’s tongue jelly, and oily stuff.

Condition: Very good impression, color and condition.
Dimensions: ôban
Publisher: Enshu-ya Hikobei
Signature: Yoshitora ga

SKU: MED024