[fragmede]

Actually, the anti-vaccination movement has great relevance here. Much like Takaki's effective treatment was lampooned because of it's similarity to archaic traditional medicine and surely got wrapped up in politics of the time, the anti-vaccination movement has similarly become wrapped up by politics and can no longer sanely be discussed.

Takaki most likely had to contend with thinking his cure for beriberi was similarly "monumentally stupid" and "based on poor 'science' and scaremongering", which prevented an objective examination of his experiments.