Koreans' traditional view on death has been much influenced by Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and shamanism since ancient times. Confucianism emphasizes the importance of the real life in this world and highly praises doing good deeds for the family and the community. It also praises people who are enlightened by education and self-discipline. Confucian scholars admit that death cannot be understood by rational thinking although it is unavoidable as a cosmic order. Taoism sees life as the same entity as death; Both are two different aspects of the same cosmos or the wholeness. However, the disciples of Taoism became much interested in a long life and well being that may be achieved by harmonizing with the cosmic order. Buddhism thinks that death and life are an "illusion". It says that people can be enlightened by recognizing the fact that "Nothing is born and nothing is dying in this world. Everything is the product of your mind occupied with false belief." However, secular Buddhists believe in the afterlife and metempsychosis of the soul. This belief is sometimes connected with the view of the traditional shamanism. Shamanism dichotomizes the world between "this world" and "that world". After death, the person's soul travels to "that world", where it may influence life of people who reside in "this world". And shamans who are spiritual beings living in "this world" mediate souls and living people. In conclusion, there are various views and beliefs regarding death, which are influenced by a number of religions and philosophies. They should be seriously considered when making a medical decision regarding the end of patients' life.
Buddhism ; Confucianism ; Humans ; Philosophy ; Religious Philosophies ; Republic of Korea ; Shamanism ; Thinking

The differences in the cognition on the location of "Jiaji" between Taoism and medical science are summarized through literature searching. In the medical field, "Jiaji" is generally described as "Jiaji Xue (point)", which is considered as EX-B 2, while, in Taoism, it is expressed as "Jiaji Guan (pass)", focusing on the crucial parts of the body. Medical scholars lay their attention to the distance of "Jiaji" lateral to the spine, in which "Jia" (place on both sides) is mostly considered. In comparison, the Taoists emphasize the central axis on the back of human body expressed as "Jiaji Gu (bone)" and "Jiaji Sanguan (three crucial parts)", in which, "Ji (spine)" is the key. Due to the therapeutic purposes of acupuncture, medical scholars focus on the communication of "Jiaji" with the body surface ultimately. Based on the inner perspective of Taoism, "Jiaji" is connoted to be the three-dimensional structural space located deeply inside of the body. The cognitive differences in the location of "Jiaji" between Taoism and medical science reflect the discrepancy in the cognitive dimensions and approaches to the human body between them, which provide the references for the textual research of "Jiaji" in traditional Chinese medicine.
Humans ; Medicine ; Religious Philosophies ; Acupuncture Therapy ; Cognition ; Communication

A man should control his ejaculation until a woman has an orgasm if the couple desires to achieve mutual orgasms during sexual intercourse. In male-oriented traditional societies, men have sexual relations without concerns about female sexuality. On the contrary, men's erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation have been regarded as detrimental to sexual relationships since female sexuality has gained similar importance to male sexuality in the context of gender equality. Thus, many men would like to sustain erections for as long as desired and regulate their ejaculation like the experts in the Tantric sex or Taoism. Sexual techniques or teachings of the ancient Tantric sex or Taoism may sound illogical from a modern medical perspective, but they have something to teach us, such as focusing on foreplay to achieve female orgasm. Several issues on men's erectile capability and ejaculation are discussed in this article, while reviewing a variety of viewpoints on male sexual functioning.
Coitus ; Ejaculation ; Erectile Dysfunction ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Orgasm ; Premature Ejaculation ; Religious Philosophies ; Sexuality

Bone Diseases ; therapy ; Bone and Bones ; physiology ; Humans ; Martial Arts ; education ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; methods ; Religious Philosophies

Theory of Traditional Oriental Medicine (TOM) is based on 'Yin-yang' and the 'Five elements' which are ancient chinese ideology for comprehending universe. TOM is also a kinds of ideological medicine, that contains confucian ideas, Buddhism, Taoism as progression of history and cultural trend. Ideological TOM explains physiologic and pathologic condition by 'Maintaining and Disruption of Balance' like Hippocrates, Galen, Ayurvedic medicine. The holy principle of comprehending TOM can be expressed as "To practice medicine based on ideological intuition". In western society original western ideological medicine was died out in the course of scientific revolution. But ancient and medieval oriental medicine is still in existence as a strong medical power in Korea. Recently, with the trend of academic integration, there was an attempt to find affirmative components of TOM. However, the theory of TOM is so different from any criteria for modern knowledge of science and seems to be incommensurable with modern evidence based medicine. As we know, science is the knowledge that could progress cumulatively unswayed by paradigm. To integrate TOM and modern scientific medicine, first of all, the theory of TOM must be made as a precise knowledge through strict ontological and epistemological study. The precise knowledge met clear study requirements will be integrated spontaneously, and Only that has the right to join competition for developing practical technical development. In this knowledge society, the survival and integration of TOM will not only achieved by ideological slogan but also emotional sympathy anymore.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Buddhism ; Evidence-Based Medicine ; Humans ; Integrative Medicine ; Korea ; Medicine, Ayurvedic ; Medicine, East Asian Traditional ; Religious Philosophies ; Yin-Yang

Nursing is a discipline that helps to understand human being, to mitigate pains in life by promoting and recovering health, and to study the basic principles in sustaining and preserving life. To understand man and thus to nurse, it is essential to take the way of life of the specific person, his/her ideas, and natural environment into consideration. This means, the temperament, geography, environment and society peculiar to Korea have formed its own culture distinguished from those of other people. Thoughts and philosophy develop as a products of the specific culture and society. Therefore, accurate understanding of the concepts of nursing in the traditional thoughts and philosophy is indispensible to define Korean nursing. Modern Korean nursing at first rooted in the westernized nursing and western nursing intervention has been applied ever since its introduction in the late 19th century under the paradigm of western natural science. However, Koreans in the past made use of alternative therapy which put its emphasis on the organic and holistic view of life as well as a means for traditional medicine and nursing. This alternative therapy has been largely ignored since the introduction of western medical science, and was considered something used only by the aged or the uneducated. Moreover, Health concerned practices and customary traditional therapy have been discarded in the clinical medicine as "unscientific" or "unsystematic". As described above, it is true that Korean nursing has developed in the quantitative aspect only adhering to western nursing intervention. Now it is the time to stop to hold ourself and to look back our past. To find and develop the originality of Korean nursing to cope with the globalization, it is necessary to rediscover nursing (alternative) therapy in Korean culture ignored so far. For this purpose, this study examines the oriental philosophy to explore alternative nursing theory now under development. Also it aims to present ways to apply alternative therapy to nursing education, research and clinical practices and ultimately to show the desirable direction of the nursing to go in the future. Yangsaeng theory of Taoism and Yin-yang, Oh-hang(five elements) and khi theory in Dongeuibogam which gave enormous influences on Korean medical culture and treatment together with Sahsang(four temperaments) emphasized in Dongeuisusebowon will be examined as conceptual framework. Concepts of nursing are categorized into views on each the universe, the human being and nursing. Views on human being is classified into subcategories of body, life, health, and disease. Also it emphasizes the necessity of including alternative therapy in nursing intervention. Views on the universe is classified into yin-yang, khi, and temperament. Nursing will be available anywhere and easily accessible with this new nursing intervention. Trying to give a new thoughts to all those traditional concepts and alternative therapy, this article suggests the necessity of developing original Korean nursing theory and nursing intervention.
Clinical Medicine ; Education, Nursing ; Geography ; Humans ; Internationality ; Korea ; Medicine, Traditional ; Natural Science Disciplines ; Nursing Theory ; Nursing* ; Philosophy ; Religious Philosophies ; Temperament ; Yin-Yang

Heo Joon is one of the best-known physicians of the Chosun Dynasty, the last imperial dynasty (1392~1910) of Korea. He had served King Seonjo during his practice, and has produced many publications on medicine. Then, how did he actually treat the patients? So far, other than the case when he treated Gwanghaegun's smallpox, it is not clearly known how and when he attended and treated the ill. In his most famous book, the Treasured Mirror of Eastern Medicine (TMEM), he details the physiopathological mechanisms, diagnoses, treatments or prescriptions, and treatment cases, however, it is not clear if they're from his own clinical experiences. Nevertheless, based on the written method, the original information is reconstituted according to its respective editors of the TMEM, a particular case being included may be considered as an agreement and acceptance of an actual treatment executed. This research analyzes what type of medicinal theory that the main writer Heo Joon employed in his real treatments, as well as how he diagnosed and treated diseases. After analyzing the complete series of the TMEM, we found a total of 301 clinical cases. Here, one may wonder, why does the Section of Inner and External Bodily Elements, that deal with diseases and the structure of the body, have far outnumber cases than the Section of Miscellaneous Disorders? Why does the TMEM introduce the various types of disease experiences and treatment cases, medical cases, simple treatments, nurturing life, materia medica, and also include supernatural phenomena? Why does the TMEM include the experiences and cases from the book published in the Song, Jin, Yuan dynasty of China, moreover in the Ming Dynasty of its time. These questions can be answered to the extent that Heo Joon and the others who participated in completing the book sought to justify the new clinical medicine practices, and because it had to be acceptable to the Confucius beliefs which dominated the society, and also because the book came to light in a time when tensions between the pre-existing Chosun medicine and the newly introduced Chinese medicine were evident. Among the clinical cases in the TMEM, there are only 41 cases that can be considered as Medical Cases which include the pathology and treatment mechanism. After analyzing these mechanisms, we were able to discover that they cover not only the theories of the 4 great physicians of Jin-Yuan Dynasty, but also the theories of the Danxi's Medical Current, a big trend in the Early Ming Dynasty, and some of the most recent clinical cases that had been just reported at the time. However, Heo Joon did not lean towards a particular theory of medicine; rather, he insisted on establishing a classical medicine based on the traditional medicinal scriptures such as the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon or Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica, and had created his own Body-Viscera medicine, as Shin Dongwon's recent research. Moreover, he successfully secured his own right to be a clinical physician by customizing the amount of medication in prescriptions for the people of Chosun. Heo Joon was one of the chief physicians for the Royal Family of the Chosun Dynasty. Despite the tendency of traditional medicine to lean towards Taoism or Fangshu, for him the most important thing was the actual treatment of diseases. As a result, Heo Joon successfully treated smallpox by utilizing traditional medicinal methods, by breaking the taboo of not using medication on such diseases, as well as he was able to treat an unknown disease, scarlet fever, by discovering the pathological mechanism of the illness. Also he made bold decisions on altering existing prescriptions to treat diseases more efficiently. The TMEM consists of not only justified methods that integrate the different and scattered medicinal and clinical practices, which many insisted their originality, but also was backed with Heo Joon's such credible and endeavored clinical medicine.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; China ; Clinical Medicine ; Diagnosis ; Humans ; Korea ; Materia Medica ; Medicine, Traditional ; Music ; Pathology ; Prescriptions ; Religious Philosophies ; Scarlet Fever ; Smallpox ; Taboo

PURPOSE: We specifically investigated the young doctor (residents) patient doctor-patient relationship in Korea. A society built on Confucianism, age is expected to affect even the doctor-patient relationship. METHODS: 57 residents participated and answered 6 open-ended questions. 90 patients of various age participated and answered 3 open-ended and 6 close-ended questions. RESULTS: It seems that the general problem of the doctor-patient relationships was related to attitudes and communication skills. Over 80% of the residents felt uncomfortable and received inappropriate verbal expressions and attitudes from their patients simply because they were young or younger than the patients. This negative experience resulted mostly from the residents' self-perceived lack of experience and clinical competence and the patients' distrust of young doctors. As for the patients, over 80% preferred middle-aged doctors to young doctors. Middleaged doctors were thought to be easier to understand, better mannered, more humane, and clinically competent. Most residents expected professional respect from their patients, while patients expected kindness and humility from the young doctors. This shows a gap in the reciprocal expectations between residents and patients. CONCLUSION: Young doctors are perceived as inexperienced and incompetent and, consequently, not trusted by patients in Korea. To improve the resident-patient relationship, improvement in attitude and communication skills is needed.
Clinical Competence ; Confucianism ; Humans ; Korea

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

Korea has the highest suicide rate amongst the OECD countries. Yet, its research on suicidal behaviors has been primitive. While the Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide has gained global attention, there has only been a few researches, which examined its applicability in Korea. In this article, we review the previous studies on suicide and examine the association between the Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide and traditional Korean culture, with an emphasis on Collectivism and Confucianism. We propose that pathways to suicide might vary depending on cultural influences. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research will be discussed.
Confucianism ; Korea* ; Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development ; Psychological Theory* ; Suicide*