Julis Scriba

• Born: 1848
• Died: 1905

Julius Karl Scriba was a German physician who taught and practiced medicine for many years at what is today the University of Tokyo School of Medicine. He is considered one of the founders of the modern practice of external medicine in Japan.

Born in Reinheim, in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, he studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg, and then worked for a time as a tutor at the University of Freiberg. Scriba came to Japan in 1881, where he taught and practiced medicine at the Tokyo School of Medicine (later, the Tokyo Imperial University Medical School) for roughly twenty years. The innovations he introduced into Japan included sterilized and bloodless surgery, as well as techniques for using tourniquets and ether.