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"Kawasaki was an icon in the paediatric world,” Jane Burns, professor and director of the Kawasaki Disease Research Centre at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, told The BMJ. In 1949 he became a staff paediatrician at the Red Cross Hospital outside Tokyo and began to undertake research. ” "Ten years after starting at the Japanese Red Cross Central Hospital (now the Japanese Red Cross Medical Centre) in Tokyo, I examined on 5 January 1961 a boy aged four years and three months with a curious clinical symptom complex I had never seen,” he explained.3 "The patient had a high fever of about two weeks' duration, marked bilateral conjunctival hyperaemia without discharge, reddening dry fissured lips, diffuse redness of the mucous membrane of oral cavity, strawberry like tongue, left non-purulent cervical adenopathy, polymorphous erythema on the body, and marked redness of palms and soles, with indurative oedema of hands and feet following desquamation from the fingertips.”
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Photo credit: Tsubara Kawasaki Not many physicians have a disease named after them. Tomisaku (“Tomi”) Kawasaki, who has died at the age of 95, was one of the few. Kawasaki disease, a rare inflammatory autoimmune disorder found in young children, is his namesake.1 In recent months, this syndrome has been in the global media spotlight as paediatricians discuss its similarity to the complications of covid-19 in children. “Kawasaki was an icon in the paediatric world,” Jane Burns, professor and director of the Kawasaki Disease Research Centre at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, told The BMJ . “Dr K was an amazing cheerleader and advocate for research on the condition that bears his name. Despite his rock star status, he was humble and generous with his time to physicians and parents alike. He was clearly motivated by a deep love of all children.” Kawasaki was the youngest of seven brothers and sisters. His parents named him Tomisaku, meaning to make a fortune, in the hope that he …