Hirotaro Narabayashi

Who was Hirotaro Narabayashi?

Hirotaro Narabayashi was a prominent Japanese neurosurgeon.

He was born in Kobe into a long line of physicians originally from Nagasaki. He was a descendant of Chinzan Narabayashi who had studied Western medicine with Dutch physicians at Dejima in the 17th century. He received his medical degree from the Tokyo University School of Medicine in 1946 and his Ph.D. from Tokyo University in 1955. In the same year, he was appointed Associate Professor, Department of Neuropsychiatry, at the Juntendo University School of Medicine in Tokyo. He was promoted to Full Professor in 1964. From 1968 to 1988, he was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology at the Juntendo University School of Medicine.

Although trained originally as a neuropsychiatrist, he is best known for his pioneering work in stereotaxic neurosurgery, especially the surgical treatment of Parkinson's disease. In 1949 he constructed a stereotaxic apparatus based on drawings of that constructed in the United States by Victor Horsley and Robert H. Clarke and in 1951 performed the first stereotactic pallidotomy on an athetoid child. The next year he performed a procaine oil blocking of the pallidum of a patient with Parkinson's disease, successfully abolishing the rigidity and tremor symptomatic of this disease. In 1957 he established a private clinic specializing in stereotaxic neurosurgery which became a leading center for both research and treatment. Physicians came to visit from all over the world, and patients came for treatment from many countries.