A4 Ghost Story 14: Kaitai Shinsho

At the end of a university lecture, a professor told this story.

"You all know the book 'Kaitai Shinsho', right?"

The students nodded.

It is a famous book in the history of Japanese medicine.

It was created during the Edo period by translating a Dutch anatomy book.

It was the first full-scale human anatomy book in Japan.

The professor slowly wrote 'Kaitai Shinsho' on the blackboard.

"Usually, this book is spoken of as the 'beginning of Japanese medicine'."

"However, I heard a slightly strange story when I was a student."

It happened when the professor was a graduate student.

He said it was when he was using an old archives room for his research on medical history.

A large number of manuscripts and records from the Edo period were stored there.

One day, the professor found an old notebook.

It was the diary of someone who had been involved in the translation work of the Kaitai Shinsho.

It contained detailed descriptions of the dissections.

Doctors at the time performed dissections using the bodies of executed criminals.

And they were comparing the Western anatomy books with the human body.

The first half of the diary was normal.

The shape of the bones was the same. The positions of the organs almost matched. They were surprised by that.

"The Western books are correct," they seemed to be convinced.

However, the content began to change slightly in the second half of the diary.

The writer had written something like this:

"The book and the human body match almost perfectly.

However, there is one thing that is not in the book."

When the professor read that part, he became curious and looked at the rest.

It was written there as follows:

"Deep in the chest, behind the heart, between the lungs, there is an unfamiliar sac."

There is no such organ in the book.

So at first, he thought it was a mistake.

But in the next dissection, and the one after that,

it was always in the same place.

Moreover, that sac was strange. It was not empty inside.

But it was not an organ either.

It felt soft to the touch, and there was no pulse or anything like that.

It just moved faintly.

The handwriting in the diary began to get a bit messy from there.

"I am hesitant to write about something that is not in the book.

If I write it, medicine will change. But if this is the true inner self of a person..."

And the last page. It was written there like this:

"I did not write about this in the Kaitai Shinsho.

I must not write it, because..."

The diary ended there.

Someone in the lecture hall raised their hand.

"What exactly was that sac in the end?"

The professor smiled slightly. And then he said quietly,

"Actually, there is one strange blank space in the human anatomy diagrams in the Kaitai Shinsho."

The professor drew a picture of a human chest on the blackboard.

And he drew a small circle around the back of the heart.

"The translator didn't draw anything here, but if the diary is true, then there..."

"There was something else inside every human being."