Kiyoshi Shiga

Biography of Kiyoshi Shiga

Kiyoshi Shiga studied at the imperial university of Tokyo from 1892 and graduated M.D. in 1896. By then he had already for two years worked with Kitasato Shibasaburo (1852-1931), who had discovered the tetanus bacillus, at the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Tokyo. It was here that Shiga in 1897 was able to isolate the organism now known as Shigella dysenteriae from faeces and intestinal walls in patients suffering from dysentery. In 1900 he developed a dysentery antiserum.

In 1899 Shiga was appointed laboratory director at the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Tokyo. He held this position until 1920, with an intermission for the years of 1901 to 1903. He spent these two years in Europe, working with Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) at The Royal Prussian Institute for Experimental Therapy in Berlin. Together they developed chemotherapy for trypanosomiasis, a blood disease caused by a protozoan micro organism. He also worked for some time at the institute for physiological chemistry in Heidelberg.

In 1903 Shiga returned to Tokyo to resume work with Kitasato at the Institute for Infectious Diseases. Shiga became Igaku Hakushi in 1905. In 1920 he was appointed professor of bacteriology at the University of Seoul and in 1929 became the university's president. Two years later he returned to Tokyo and remained there until his death. In 1936 Shiga was appointed an official of the Imperial Household.

His research also included work on leprosy, beriberi, and tuberculosis. His comprehensive written work in all these fields, with his textbooks, was of major importance to medical literature in his native country. In Japanese he published, among other things, a two volume work on clinical bacteriology and infectious diseases as well as a clinical bacterio- and serology.