One of the main topics discussed by historians, including those of science, in the late twentieth century is the historical introspection into “modernism,” a term based on a teleological view of the world. According to the conventional understanding of world history, the historical process to modernity that has led to the Civil Revolution, Scientific Revolution, and Capitalism is linear and universally inevitable, and this—in other words, Eurocentrism—implies that only the historical experiences of Europeans are relevant. This mainstream view of world history has spread the dichotomous analytic framework of historiography and reinforced cultural essentialism, which has eventually given a Euro- or Sino-centric hierarchical presentation of history. This type of world view rests on the assumption that there are intrinsic and incommensurable differences between cultures or localities, which a lot of commentators and scholars have constantly countered by arguing that that presumption does not comply with what historical sources say.
Drawing on some trail-blazing scholarship of cultural studies and others, this essay turns away from this “conventional” framework of historiography and presents a world view that is framed in the context of trans-locality, interconnectedness, plurality, heterogeneity, polycentricity, and diversity. In recent years, in an attempt to search for new analytic frames, some endeavors have emerged in the field of cultural or science studies to go beyond just providing critical commentaries or case studies. Furthermore, researchers and scholars in the history of science, technology and medicine in East Asia have put an effort into conceptualizing and establishing such new analytic frames. Among those approaches are attempts to shed light upon the trans-local yet global interconnectedness (emphatically in pre-modern periods), diverse historical trajectories to modernities, and polycentric as well as plural landscape of scientific enterprises over time and across the world.On top of these new visions of world history, this essay further elaborates on and proposes some conceptive ideas: (1) “Tradition” as a set of recipes, which could replace the idea of the living yet dead tradition; (2) “Medicine 醫” as a problem-solving activity, which calls more attention to historical actors of East Asian medicine; (3) “East Asian medicines” as a family of trans-locally related practices in East Asia, which would lead to going beyond the nationalist historiography such as Sino-centrism; (4) “Problematique” as the system of questions and concepts which make up East Asian medicine, which should reveal what East Asian medicines have been about; (5) “Styles of Practice” for the historiography of East Asian medicines, as opposed to the cultural account, epistemological historiography or praxiography; and, as an illustrative example, (6) “Topological Bodies” for the history of anatomy in East Asia. Going beyond tradition and dichotomous historiography, these new methodologies or conceptual ideas will contribute to the understanding of the history of East Asian medicines.

About one hundred years after the publication of Tonguibogam (1613), a physician at the court YI Suki (1664-?) wrote a medical manuscript titled Yoksimanpil (Miscellaneous Jottings on Medical Experiences and Tests, 1734). As indicated in its title, Yoksimanpil was a medical essay composed of 130 medical case histories, drawing on what YI Suki himself had experienced in his medical practices. This paper examines the messages YI Suki in Yoksimanpil tried to address to his fellow Korean doctors, and by doing so illuminates an aspect of the medicine in the late Choson period. The argument goes that YI Suki wrote Yoksimanpil as a vehicle for promulgating his professional identity as a bureaucratic physician who belonged to the network of the chung'in technical officials-a group of government technical functionaries in late Choson Korea. Throughout the late Choson period, the chung'in technical officials had been discriminated, institutionally and socioculturally, against the yangban literati, while their promotion to honored higher positions was blocked. It was in the late 17th and early 18th century that a group of chung'in officials tried to secure their sociocultural places for their professional activity, thus bringing to light their social and professional identity in Choson society. A member of the network of the chung'in technical officials in the early 18th century, YI Suki was in an effort to position himself as a doctor somewhere between the medical tradition and the Confucian literary tradition. In these sociocultural contexts, we can see more clearly what YI Suki tried to speak of in his book and the historical meaning of the medical writing Yoksimanpil. First, the way he practiced medicine was testing and confirming what the received medical textbooks had asserted (Chunghomkobang). This style of practicing medicine could be viewed as a reflection of the comprehensivity trait of bureaucratic court physicians network YI Suki belonged to. Also this type of practice has the implication that YI Suki himself was a well-versed practitioner following the medical textual tradition, which was closely associated with the medical officials network. The emergence of the practice Chunghomkobang could be better understood in the backdrop of over 100 years of maturation process of Tonguibogam in the clinical practices. Second, he formulated the professional identity of physicians only in terms of medical proficiency without recourse to the Confucian literary tradition. In other words, in promoting the social status of medicine, he did not resort to Confucian morality. He instead emphasized his dexterity or resourcefulness in dealing with millions of ever-changing diseases (Imsikwonbyon). Conceivably, this way of characterizing his own medical practice-by way of strongly combining the textual tradition and the experiential tradition while keeping distance with the Confucian literary tradition-reflected the complexity of the ambivalent identity of the technical chung'in officials, especially in regard to Confucianism, between Confucian physicians and hereditary doctors. All in all, YI Suki presented himself as an ideal image of the physician, which arguably reflected the sociocultural and academic context of the network of the chung'in technical officials in early 18th century Choson Korea.
Confucianism ; Health Resorts ; Korea ; Light ; Manuscripts, Medical ; Morals ; Publications ; Writing

The Emergency Medicine Recipes in Local Medicinals (鄕藥救急方, Hyang'yak Kugŭpbang) (c. 14th century) is known to be one of the oldest Korean medical textbooks that exists in its entirety. This study challenges conventional perceptions that have interpreted this text by using modern concepts, and it seeks to position the medical activities of the late Koryŏ Dynasty 高麗 (918–1392) to the early Chosŏn Dynasty 朝鮮 (1392–1910) in medical history with a focus on this text. According to existing studies, Emergency Medicine Recipes in Local Medicinals is a strategic compromise of the Korean elite in response to the influx of Chinese medical texts and thus a medical text from a “periphery” of the Sinitic world. Other studies have evaluated this text as a medieval publication demonstrating stages of transition to systematic and rational medicine and, as such, a formulary book 方書 that includes primitive elements. By examining past medicine practices through “modern” concepts based on a dichotomous framework of analysis — i.e., modernity vs. tradition, center vs. periphery, science vs. culture — such conventional perceptions have relegated Emergency Medicine Recipes in Local Medicinals to the position of a transitional medieval publication meaningful only for research on hyangchal 鄕札 (Chinese character-based writing system used to record Korean during the Silla Dynasty 新羅 [57 BC–935 AD] to the Koryŏ Dynasty). It is necessary to overcome this dichotomous framework in order to understand the characteristics of East Asian medicine. As such, this study first defines “medicine 醫”, an object of research on medical history, as a “special form of problem-solving activities” and seeks to highlight the problematics and independent medical activities of the relevant actors. Through this strategy (i.e., texts as solutions to problems), this study analyzes Emergency Medicine Recipes in Local Medicinals to determine its characteristics and significance. Ultimately, this study argues that Emergency Medicine Recipes in Local Medicinals was a problem-solving method for the scholar-gentry 士人層 from the late Koryŏ Dynasty to the early Chosŏn Dynasty, who had adopted a new cultural identity, to perform certain roles on the level of medical governance and constitute medical praxis that reflected views of both the body and materials and an orientation distinguished from those of the so-called medicine of Confucian physicians 儒醫, which was the mainstream medicine of the center. Intertwined at the cultural basis of the treatments and medical recipes included in Emergency Medicine Recipes in Local Medicinals were aspects such as correlative thinking, ecological circulation of life force, transformation of materiality through contact, appropriation of analogies, and reasoning of sympathy. Because “local medicinals 鄕藥” is understood in Emergency Medicine Recipes in Local Medicinals as referring to objects easily available from one's surroundings, it signifies locality referring to the ease of acquisition in local areas rather than to the identity of the state of Koryŏ or Chosŏn. As for characteristics revealed by this text's methods of implementing medicine, Korean medicine in terms of this text consisted largely of single-ingredient formulas using diverse medicinal ingredients easily obtainable from one's surroundings rather than making use of general drugs as represented by materia medica 本草 or of multiple-ingredient formulas. In addition, accessible tools, full awareness of the procedures and processes of the guidelines, procedural rituals, and acts of emergency treatment (first aid) were more important than the study of the medical classics, moral cultivation, and coherent explanations emphasized in categorical medical texts. Though Emergency Medicine Recipes in Local Medicinals can be seen as an origin of the tradition of emergency medicine in Korea, it differs from medical texts that followed which specializing in emergency medicine to the extent that it places toxicosis 中毒 before the six climatic factors 六氣 in its classification of diseases.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Ceremonial Behavior ; Classification ; Emergencies ; Emergency Medicine ; Emergency Treatment ; Far East ; Humans ; Korea ; Materia Medica ; Medicine, East Asian Traditional ; Methods ; Publications ; Thinking ; Writing