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 treatise On Ancient Medicine is nowadays one of the most admired, and most studied, of those making up the Corpus Hippocraticum. But this favored position is not a ancient phenomenon, but a modern phenomenon. The treatise contributed to the establishment of the Empiric school of medicine. Empiricists seem to have written commentaries of Hippocratic works. But the attention paid to this work in antiquity was short-lived. In the second century A.D., Galen knew the work, but he did not devote a commentary to it. He almost totally ignored it and his powerful influence made the treatise drop out of sight from later antiquity to early modern times. On Ancient Medicine was not regarded as one of the major works of the Corpus Hippocraticum until in 1939, Emile Littre was a strong advocate of the view that the work was a genuine work of Hippocrates, and placed it first in his ten-volume edition of 1839-1861. Later, some scholars advocated Littre' view, but much more scholars rose against his position. Most of studies of the work motivated by the desire to answer the Hippocratic question reached conclusions that was vague. After all to conclude that Hippocrates was the author of this work would be rash.
*History of Medicine ; History, 19th Century ; History, 20th Century ; History, Ancient ; Literature/*history ; Manuscripts, Medical/*history

Writing a good quality scientific article takes experience and skill. I propose 'Ten Tips' that may help to improve the quality of manuscripts for scholarly journals. It is advisable to draft first version of manuscript and revise it repeatedly for consistency and accuracy of the writing. During the drafting and revising the following tips can be considered: 1) focus on design to have proper content, conclusion, points compliant with scope of the target journal, appropriate authors and contributors list, and relevant references from widely visible sources; 2) format the manuscript in accordance with instructions to authors of the target journal; 3) ensure consistency and logical flow of ideas and scientific facts; 4) provide scientific confidence; 5) make your story interesting for your readers; 6) write up short, simple and attractive sentences; 7) bear in mind that properly composed and reflective titles increase chances of attracting more readers; 8) do not forget that well-structured and readable abstracts improve citability of your publications; 9) when revising adhere to the rule of 'First and Last' - open your text with topic paragraph and close it with resolution paragraph; 10) use connecting words linking sentences within a paragraph by repeating relevant keywords.
*Algorithms ; *Authorship ; *Editorial Policies ; Information Dissemination/methods ; *Manuscripts, Medical ; *Periodicals as Topic ; *Writing

This investigation was made to reveal the current status, research trend and research level of biomedical engineering in Chinese mainland by means of scientometrics and to assess the quality of the four domestic publications by bibliometrics. We identified all articles of four related publications by searching Chinese and foreign databases from 1997 to 2001. All articles collected or cited by these databases were searched and statistically analyzed for finding out the relevant distributions, including databases, years, authors, institutions, subject headings and subheadings. The source of sustentation funds and the related articles were analyzed too. The results showed that two journals were cited by two foreign databases and five Chinese databases simultaneously. The output of Journal of Biomedical Engineering was the highest. Its quantity of original papers cited by EI, CA and the totality of papers sponsored by funds were higher than those of the others, but the quantity and percentage per year of biomedical articles cited by EI were decreased in all. Inland core authors and institutions had come into being in the field of biomedical engineering. Their research topics were mainly concentrated on ten subject headings which included biocompatible materials, computer-assisted signal processing, electrocardiography, computer-assisted image processing, biomechanics, algorithms, electroencephalography, automatic data processing, mechanical stress, hemodynamics, mathematical computing, microcomputers, theoretical models, etc. The main subheadings were concentrated on instrumentation, physiopathology, diagnosis, therapy, ultrasonography, physiology, analysis, surgery, pathology, method, etc.
Authorship ; Bibliometrics ; Biomedical Engineering ; statistics & numerical data ; China ; Databases, Bibliographic ; statistics & numerical data ; Manuscripts, Medical as Topic ; Periodicals as Topic ; statistics & numerical data ; Publications ; statistics & numerical data