This article attempts to illuminate the ways in which Kudo's medical knowledge based on 'gynecological science' constructed the cultural 'traditions' of colonial Korea. Kudo appears to have been quite an influential figure in colonial Korea in that his writings on the relationship between women's crime, gynecological science and the Choson society granted a significant amount of intellectual authority. Here, I examine Kudo's position within colonial Korea as a producer and propagator of medical knowledge, and then see how women's bodies were understood according to his gynecological knowledge. It also traces the ways in which Kudo's gynecological knowledge represents Choson society and in turn invents the 'traditions' of Chosn. Kudo's knowledge of "gynecology" which had been formed while it traveled the states such as Japan, Germany and France served as an important reference for his representation of colonial Korean society. Kudo was a proponent of biological evolution, particularly the rules of 'atavism' put forth by the criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso, and argued that an unique social environment caused 'alteration of sexual urges' and primitive cruelty in Choson women. According to Kudo, The social environment was none other than the practice of 'early marriage,' which went against the physiology of women. To Kudo, 'early marriage' was an old 'tradition' of Choson and the cause of heinous crimes, as well as an unmistakable indicator of both the primitiveness and savageness of Chosn. While Lombroso considered personal factors such as stress as the cause of women's crimes, Kudo saw Choson women's crimes as a national characteristic. Moreover, he compared the occurrence rate of husband murders by provinces, based on which he categorized the northern population of Choson as barbaric Manchurian and the southern population as the superior Japanese, a combination of racism and scientific knowledge. Kudo's writings provide an insight into the appropriation of Western medical theories and criminal anthropological knowledge by a non-Western colony as well as the ambivalence and contradictions underlying Japanese empire as in the use of concepts like 'difference' and 'unity.' According to today's standards, Kudo's physiological arguments can hardly avoid being called pseudo science, which confirms that the power and authority of science standing on 'objectivity' and 'universality' are actually dependent on social contexts that are constantly being readjusted. In the end, the cultural 'traditions' of a nation/state often taken for granted are social constructions born out of transnational crossing points of knowledges, and on the basis of these constructs are the concepts of differences between nations/states. And one of the core references for these differences in colonial Korea was Western science/medical knowledge.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Biological Evolution ; Crime ; Criminals ; Female ; Financing, Organized ; France ; Germany ; Gynecology ; Homicide ; Humans ; Japan ; Korea ; Racism ; Social Environment ; Spouses

Literature produced by the government and the private sector in the colonial era was reviewed to determine the knowledge of the people of colonial Chosun of mental illness and mental patients and the mental patient management system that they implemented or intended to implement. The results of this study show that the people of Chosun realized the need to sterilize mental patients because they considered mental patients very violent, dangerous and eugenically inferior and they believed that mental patients would eventually impede the prosperity of Chosun. The people of colonial Chosun had learned about the lifelong mental hygiene movement, which had knowledge of mental illness prevention. However, they also recognized that people who developed mental illness despite efforts to prevent such condition needed help from the modern system, especially from modern Western psychiatry. The primary responsibility to attend to mental patients was imposed on their family. The family had to understand the symptoms of mental illness according to the modern medical classification and how to deal with them. When the family could not afford to take care of its mentally ill family member due to the increase in the member's risk behavior such as frenzied-convulsive excitement, paranoia and delusion of jealousy, the family was also responsible for isolating him and connecting him with a mental hospital. The police and social workers were also responsible for observing and monitoring mental patients in their community and for connecting them with a mental hospital. The police made a list of mental patients within their area of jurisdiction and prohibited them from wandering based on the law. It was also considered desirable for mental patients who could not identify their family members to be sent to a mental hospital. Social workers were responsible for managing mental patient sanatoriums, and district commissioners sent to the police mental patients who had no family to look after them or who posed a threat to others, or else commissioned them to the government hospital. Thus, the final responsibility for mental patients was imposed on the modern Western medical team, because the district commissioners sent them to the police and the police sent them to the government mental hospital. Most educated people and government personnel in the colonial era thought modern Western psychiatry circles were responsible for mental patient management, and the Japanese empire enacted mental-health-related laws and made efforts to secure funds for the establishment of mental hospitals. As the literature at that time also show the position of the modern Western medical circle, their ambivalent attitude to mental patients must also be clarified to interpret the modern approach to treating mental patients in colonial Chosun. In this context, a research on historical figures in Japanese psychiatry, a study on the specific treatment methods used by the modern Western psychiatric team in the colonial era and their effects, and the extension of the subject period for such researches are suggested.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Delusions ; Eugenics ; Financial Management ; Hospitals, Psychiatric ; Humans ; Jealousy ; Jurisprudence ; Mental Health ; Mentally Ill Persons ; Paranoid Disorders ; Police ; Private Sector ; Risk-Taking ; Social Work

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 oral history helps researchers to fill the gap in historical documents in research on the contemporary history of medicine in Korea. More and more studies in history of contemporary medicine in Korea have come out using oral history of doctors and patients. Based upon the author's research on development of neurosurgery in late 20th century Korea, this paper discusses how to apply oral history to contemporary history of medicine, focusing on oral history of doctors in Korea. In this paper the author describes how to do and use oral history of key doctors and medical scientists in the contemporary history of medicine in Korea. The oral history can be a powerful tool to complement the written documents as following. First, from their interview, doctors and medical scientists often provide valuable information which historians cannot get from documents and written sources. As intelligent interviewees, they not only understand the purpose of research but also help actively the historian-researcher-interviewer. Second, the oral history facilitates further searches and often it leads to more findings of informants, and written and image material. More often than not, doctors and medical scientists do their own research on the topic and provide the historian with valuable historical source material from their laboratories, bedsides, family and friends. Third, interviews with medical scientists and oral material produced by doctors and medical scientists helped the researcher to understand and interpret the papers and written documents. Fourth, the subjective stories told by the medical scientists provide perspectives and historical source as narrative truth. Before a historian attempts to use the oral material as complementary historial evidence, he or she needs to cross-check the validity and of objectivity of the oral material. Oral material is produced through bidirectional intersubjective interaction between the interviewer and interviewee, and critical reflection over the relationship between the two is crucial. Especially the researcher should keep an eye on the possible bias and strive for the objectivity of the oral material with discernment and reflection, when she or he found the interviewees of doctors and medical scientists closely connected together and tied together in a web of relationship with a common interest or agenda.
Bias (Epidemiology) ; Complement System Proteins ; Eye ; Friends ; History of Medicine ; Humans ; Korea ; Neurosurgery

This essay examines the period between 1897 and 1910, when trachoma, a contagious eye disease, became an "Oriental" problem that justified exclusionary immigration policy against Asians entering the United States. It also investigates the ways in which the public fear and alleged threat of the eye disease destabilized and undermined the rights of Asian immigrants. Many scholars have explored the link between trachoma and southern and eastern European newcomers, in particular Jews, but they have not paid much attention to Chinese or Japanese immigrants, for whose exclusion trachoma played a significant role. This is primarily because the number of Asian immigrants was much smaller than that of their European counterparts and because the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which had already been in place, functioned as a stronger and more lasting deterrent to Asian immigration than exclusion or deportation through medical inspection. Moreover, into the 1910s, medical and scientific innovations for detecting parasitic diseases (e.g. hookworm) helped American authorities exclude Asians in larger numbers. Still, the analysis of the discourses surrounding trachoma and immigration from Asia, though short-lived, demonstrates the role of medical inspection in controlling and regulating Asian immigrants, in particular Chinese and Japanese, into the United States and in constructing their legal and political rights. In 1906, the fear of trachoma justified an order to segregate Japanese students from white children in San Francisco even at the cost of compromising their rights as citizens. Along with fierce criticisms against immigration officials by the American public, the 1910 investigation of the San Francisco Immigration Office problematized the admission of trachoma-afflicted Asian immigrants. Those critical of the Immigration Office and its implementation of American immigration policy called for exclusionary measures to limit the privileges of exempt classes and domiciled aliens and hinder the exertion of their rights to leave and reenter their adopted country. The two examples show that trachoma was a convenient excuse to condemn inefficient immigration policy and regulate allegedly diseased Asian bodies. In 1910, the federal government made a decision to relegate to steamship companies full responsibility for medical inspection at Asian ports. Since they had to pay a fine for every immigrant excluded at American borders for medical reasons, including trachoma, steamship companies carried out more rigorous examinations. With medical advancements and growing interest in parasitic diseases, trachoma soon lost its appeal to immigration authorities. However, the association of immigration, race, and disease has continued to provide a rationale for immigration control beyond American borders.
Emigrants and Immigrants/*history/legislation & jurisprudence ; Emigration and Immigration/*history/legislation & jurisprudence ; Far East/ethnology ; History, 19th Century ; History, 20th Century ; Humans ; Trachoma/ethnology/*history/prevention & control ; United States

As the sciences advanced rapidly in the modern European world, outstanding achievements have been made in medicine, chemistry, biology, physiology, physics and others, which have been co-influencing each of the scientific disciplines. Accordingly, such medical and scientific phenomena began to be reflected in novels. In particular, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein includes the diverse aspects of the change and development in the medicine and science. Associated with medical and scientific information reflected in Frankenstein and Frankenstein's experiments in the text, accordingly, this research will investigate the aspects of medical and scientific development taking place in the nineteenth century in three ways. First, the medical and scientific development of the nineteenth century has been reviewed by summerizing both the information of alchemy in which Frankenstein shows his interest and the new science in general that M. Waldman introduces in the text. Second, the actual features of medical and scientific development have been examined through some examples of the experimental methods that M. Waldman implicitly uttered to Frankenstein. Third, it has been checked how the medical and scientific development is related to the main issues of mechanism and vitalism which can be explained as principles of life. Even though this research deals with the developmental process of medicine & science and origin & principles of life implied in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, its significance is that it is the interdisciplinary research focussing on how deeply medical and scientific discourse of Mary Shelley's period has been imbedded in the nineteenth century novel.
Biomedical Research/*history ; History, 19th Century ; Literature, Modern/*history ; *Medicine in Literature

1793 Yellow fever in Philadelphia was the most severe epidemics in the late 18th century in the United States. More than 10% of the population in the city died and many people fled to other cities. The cause of yellow fever in the United States had close relationship with slaves and sugar in Philadelphia. Sugarcane plantation had needed many labors to produce sugar and lots of Africans had to move to America as slaves. In this process, Aedes aegypti, the vector of yellow fever had migrated to America and the circumstances of ships or cities provided appropriate conditions for its breeding. In this period, the cause of yellow fever could not be established exactly, so suggestions of doctors became entangled in political and intellectual discourses in American society. There was a critical conflict between Jeffersonian Republicanism and Federalism about the origin and treatment of yellow fever. Benjamin Rush, a Jeffersonian Republican, suggested urban sanitation reform and bloodletting. He believed the infectious disease happened because of unsanitary city condition, so he thought the United States could be a healthy nation by improvement of the public health and sanitation. He would like to cope with national crisis and develop American society on the basis of republicanism. While Rush suggested the improvement of public health and sanitation, the city government of Philadelphia suggested isolation of yellow fever patients and quarantine. City government isolated the patients from healthy people and it reconstructed space of hospital. Also, it built orphanages to take care of children who lost their parents during the epidemic and implemented power to control people put in the state of exception. Of course, city government tried to protect the city and nation by quarantine of every ship to Philadelphia. Control policies of yellow fever in 1793 showed different conflicts and interactions. Through the yellow fever, Jeffersonian Republicanism and Federalism had conflicted in politically, but they had interactions for control of the infectious disease. And with these kinds of infectious diseases policies, we can see interactions in local, national and global level.
Government Regulation/*history ; Health Policy/*history ; History, 18th Century ; Humans ; Philadelphia ; *Politics ; Yellow Fever/epidemiology/etiology/*history/*prevention & control

Born in Pyongyang in 1914, Choe Ung-sok was a physician who lived through the Japanese colonial era (1910-1945), rule by the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK; 1945-1948), and national division (1948). Influenced by socialism and social hygiene/social medicine during his studies in Japan, he played the role of representing the socialist camp in the discussions related to the construction of a heath care system immediately following the Liberation (1945). His key arguments were: first, the nationalization of the medical system and the implementation of nationwide programs to eradicate diseases; second, the provision of free medical services through the expansion of social insurance; third, the reeducation of the medical personnel; fourth, the provision of social sciences education to the medical personnel and the reorganization of medicine into preventive medicine; fifth, the nationalization of pharmaceutics; sixth, the laborers' establishment of autonomous medical organs (affordable clinics, medical consumers' unions through cooperatives); and seventh, the reduction of work hours to 6-8 hours, technical improvement, respite from research, and guarantee of economic life for the medical personnel. Influenced by the medical systems of the Soviet Union and Japan, such arguments stood in opposition to the right wing's plan for the construction of a relatively passive health care system at the time but, in the end, failed to be realized in southern part of Korea under the USAMGIK. Subsequently, he defected to northern part of Korea and came to participate in the task of constructing North Korea's health care system. Choe's life and design for a health care system provide examples through which one can confirm the nature of social hygiene/social medicine both during the Japanese colonial era and before and after the Liberation and the contents of the design related to a health care system as held by the socialist faction. In addition, they show that, immediately after the Liberation, there existed a broad spectrum of imagination and arguments concerning the desirable health care system. Following the division of the Korean Peninsula, South Korea witnessed the instatement of a regime that established anti-communism as the state policy and the strong influence of the United States in politics, economy, and culture. The consequent frustration of Choe's design for a health care system and his defection to North Korea frustrated the creation of a National Heath Service (NHS) in South Korea, reinforced the tendency to view NHS and social insurance as "socialist" or "communist" methods, and led to the restriction of the scope of subsequent discussions related to health care system. In conclusion, the course of Choe's life and thought went beyond the life of an individual during a period in which diverse ideologies collided through the Japanese colonial era, Liberation, and national division and symbolically demonstrates one important path of the process of constructing a health care system on the Korean Peninsula.
Delivery of Health Care/*history ; Democratic People's Republic of Korea ; History, 20th Century ; Physicians/*history ; *Politics ; Republic of Korea

This paper traces how Koreans of north area became medical doctors in colonial Korea. Most of the past research have focused only on the well-known medical doctors, or even when they discussed a great number of doctors, many research tended to only pay attention to the explicit final results of those doctors. This research, on the other hand, includes ordinary medical doctors as well as the renowed ones, and adjusts the focus to the lifetime period of their growth and activities. As a result, the misunderstanding and obscurity about the Korean medical doctors of north area during this period have been cleared. The new characteristics of the Korean medical doctors of this period have been found, along with their embodiment of historical significance. At the time, Koreans had to get through a number of qualifications in order to become doctors. First is the unique background of origin in which the family held interest in the modern education and was capable of supporting it financially. Second is the long-term status of education that the education from elementary to high school was completed without interruption. Third is the academic qualification that among various institutions of higher education, medical science was chosen as a major. Fourth is the condition of career in which as the career as a doctor had consistently continued. Thus, in oder to become a modern medical doctor, Koreans had to properly complete these multiple steps of process. The group of Korean medical doctors in north area, which was formed after getting through these series of process, possessed a number of characteristics. Firstly, as the upper-middle classes constituted the majority of medical doctors in Korea, the societal status of doctors rose and the foundation for the career as a doctor to be persisted as the family occupation settled. Secondly, the research career and academic degree became the principal method to escape from the discrimination and hierarchy existed between doctors. A PhD degree, especially, was the significant mark for clearly displaying the abilities and outcomes of the doctors. Lastly, the research career, education experience, clinical training and such that the Korean doctors of the period had built up were weak at the time, however, they were important sources for the future medical science development. Indeed, after Liberation, the rapid settlement and growth of Korea's medical science field were largely beholden to thus. Therefore, the growth of the Koreans as doctors did not cease in colonial Korea, but instead continued onto the history of future generations. In spite of the fact that the Korean doctors's growth and activities were greatly limited under the forceful policy of colonial domination of the era, the efforts the Korean doctors had put were not in vain. Likewise, if we do not fix our attention at the dominating policy and system, but rather put together the actors' correspondence and struggles of the period, then the Korean doctors will be a part of the living history. Hereby, the clue to the paradox between the suppression of medical science in colonial Korea and its leap after Liberation can be untied.
Colonialism ; Education, Medical/*history ; Faculty/*history ; History, 20th Century ; Korea ; *Physicians ; Schools, Medical/*history

This paper aims to examine the preventive measures taken against the plague in colonial Korea, particularly as applied to the control of Chinese coolies in 1911, soon after the annexation. The Government General of Korea began preventive measures with a train quarantine in Shin'uiju and Incheon in response to the spread of the plague to the Southern Manchuria. Shin' uiju had become urbanized due the development of the transportation network, and the seaport of Incheon was the major hub for traffic with China. Examining the transportation routes for the entry and exit of Chinese to and from Korea makes clear the reason why the Korea Government General initiated preventive measures in mid-January, 1911. The Government General of Korea tried to block the entry of Chinese through the land border crossing with China and through ports of entry, primarily Incheon. During the implementation of the preventive measures, quarantine facilities were built, including a quarantine station and isolation facility in Incheon. It was also needed to investigate the population and residential locations of Chinese in Korea to prevent the spread of plague. A certificate of residence was issued to all Chinese in Korea, which they needed to carry when they travelled. The preventive measures against plague which broke out in Manchuria were removed gradually. However, there was no specific measures against Chinese coolies, those who had migrated from China to work in the spring in Korea. Still the Government General of Korea had doubt about an infection of the respiratory system. As a result, the labor market in colonial Korea underwent changes in this period. The Government General recruited Korean laborers, instead of Chinese coolies whose employment had been planned. This move explains the Government General's strong preventive measures against plague and uncertainty in the route of plague infection, which influenced subsequent regulations on the prohibition of Chinese coolies working on the public enterprise sites and the improvement of labor conditions for Korean laborers.
China/ethnology ; Colonialism ; History, 20th Century ; Humans ; Korea ; Plague/*history/*prevention & control ; Quarantine/*history