This paper explores historical backgrounds and contents of Treatise on Medicine written by King Sejo (r.1455-1468) including his views on traditional medicine and pharmacy in the early Chosen period. The Treatise declared by King Sejo in 1463 has been considered as an important and unique manual of medicine because it was the exclusive example written by the king of Chosen. It was the King Sejo's era when the medical milieu in both social and medical aspects was highly encouraged thanks to the previous achievements by King Sejong the Great (r.1418-1450). King Sejo, in particular, who was much interested in practical learning called 'Miscellaneous Studies' emphasized on court medicine. His writing can be understood in such historical frame. Another reason why he wrote the Treatise can be said that he felt necessary for establishing the medical ethic codes for inefficient court medicine-officials. In personal background, he tried to find available remedies since he had been suffered from some chronic diseases. The contents of the Treatise can be broadly fallen to the clinical and ethical aspects, In the former one, the Treatise focuses on treatment without hesitation through the sharp and exact diagnosis by medical doctors. In the latter one, eight categories of medical doctors are discussed according to their moral degrees, sim'eui, sik'eui, yak'eui, hon'eui, kwang'eui, mang'eui, sa'eui, and sal'eui. Finally, musim'ji-eui was supplemented. Among them, sal'eui, medicine-official laking both medical ability and ethical attitude, was classified as the lowest degree, sim'eui, medicine-official sincerely making his all efforts for patients, was thought to be a paragon of medical morality. In conclusion, the Treatise on Medicine by King Sejo played an important role as a manual for the principle of medical practice and for the instruction to enhance ethical attitude among medicine-officials.
English Abstract ; *Famous Persons ; History of Medicine, 15th Cent. ; History of Medicine, Early Modern ; Korea ; *Medicine ; State Medicine/*history ; Textbooks/*history

The state-running medical institutions which had been instituted in the earlier period of the Chosun dynasty substantially downsized during the reconstructing process after the major wars with Japan and Qing dynasty. The downsizing was mainly due to the malfunctioning public financial system; but it was also due to the growth of the private medical market. The growth of the private medical market reoriented the focus of the public health system of the Chosun dynasty from providing treatment for every minor disease to providing the more efficient policy against epidemic. Hwal-in Seo (a temporary local public health center established for epidemic) became a new core of the dynasty's health policy under the phrase of "Ae Rye (saving the rituals)." As the changes of the dynasty's public health policy, the growing private medical market had been admitted into the public domain. Chosun government once had declared Sa Yak Gye (a private mutual-aid group for medicine) illegal and prohibited the private groups to be organized. Instead, with the policy change mentioned above, the government tried to support the private mutual-aid group for medicine while forbidding sales of fake medicine, restraining rise of price of medicine. Especially the Do go merchants often caused the sudden rise of price of medicine by bulk purchasing. Medical practice was reassessed as the period when it was considered as one of the lowest professions had been over. Although the Yangban class still refused to be a professional medical practitioner themselves, they also well understood the value of medicine as a field of study to save human and dismissed negative perception on medicine. Medicine as a field of study and medical practice, which had been underestimated under the ruling system influenced by the Song Confucianism and the status system of the Chosun dynasty, faced a new era. The whole society guaranteed more free practices of the medical practitioners and they were recognized for their works. With the change of social environment, the government officials gradually realized needs to discuss how they could educate and recruit medical practitioners to provide advanced medical treatment and what provisions they had to legislate to ensure the stable supply of the medicine. It is certain that the transformation developed in the medical environment and the changes of the public health policy up to 18th century Chosun dynasty accompanied the emergence of the commercial society. However, the overall social urge was still not enough to induce the actual law-making process. The change of the public health policy and the growth of the private medical market were surely the evidence of the transforming Chosun society; at the same time, they also revealed the immaturity of the medical environment which was not able to lead new health policies.
Health Policy/history ; History, 16th Century ; History, 17th Century ; History, 18th Century ; Humans ; Korea ; Medicine, Korean Traditional/*history ; Private Sector/*history ; Public Health/*history ; State Medicine/history

This paper, mainly based on literature and documents from North Korea and Russia, described how health care system had been formulated during the period of between liberation from Japanese Occupation and formation of its own government in North Korea, which is so-called 'the Period of People's Democracy'. North Korea authorities, by themselves, address that their health care system is characterized by state medicine, universal free medical care, emphasis on preventive medicine, community(ho) doctors in charge, provisions of modern medical services in parallel with traditional ones, imposed high value on ideologies of medical personnel, and mass participation of health programs so on, taken rise since this period. Under North Korea's socialistic regime, authorities started to restructure health care system through national health care organizations and institutes, which partially provided medical service free. Also, they emphasized preventive medicine against 'capitalistic' treatment-oriented medicine, and community(ho) doctor in-charge was derived from this period. It showed that the mass participation on health program was equal hereafter and they had under bias toward more emphasis on ideology of medical personnel rather than their professionalism. The attempt to develop traditional medicine had been made during this period, however, much funding and support was not observed. In this period, it showed that a series of action to restructure health care system had been gradually carried out.
Delivery of Health Care/*history ; History, 20th Century ; Humans ; Korea ; State Medicine/history

This study focuses on the formation of medical education in North Korea from 1945 to 1948 in terms of the centralization of medical education, and on the process and significance of the systemization of medical education. Doctors of the past trained under the Japanese colonial system lived and worked as liberalists. More than half of these doctors who were in North Korea defected to South Korea after the country was liberated. Thus the North Korean regime faced the urgent task of cultivating new doctors who would 'serve the state and people.' Since the autumn of 1945, right after national liberation, Local People's Committees organized and implemented medical education autonomously. Following the establishment of the Provisional People's Committee of North Korea, democratic reform was launched, leading to the centralized administration of education. Consequently, medical educational institutions were realigned, with some elevated to medical colleges and others shut down. The North Korean state criticised the liberalistic attitude of doctors and the bureaucratic style of health administration, and tried to reform their political consciousness through political inculcation programs. The state also grant doctors living and housing privileges, which show its endeavor to build 'state medicine'. By 1947, a medical education system was established in which the education administration was put in charge of training new doctors while the health administration was put in charge of nurturing and retraining health workers. In this way, the state was the principal agent that actively established a centralized administrative system in the process of the formation of medical education in North Korea following national liberation. Another agent was deeply involved in this process - the faculty that was directly in charge of educating the new doctors. Studying the medical faculty remains another research task for the future. By exploring how the knowledge, generational experience, socio-political consciousness and world views adopted by these teachers during the colonial era were manifested in their pedagogy after national liberation will shed more light on the 'prototype' of North Korean medical education.
Democratic People's Republic of Korea ; Education, Medical/*history ; History, 20th Century ; Physicians/*history ; Politics ; State Medicine

This article is based on conceptual and methodological understanding of hygienic modernity in the nineteenthcentury Western countries: one is the concept of modern hygiene in the context of modern state and the other is methodological relation of modern hygiene to scientific theory of germ. While modern state calls for the institutionalization of medical police as an administrative tool for consolidating the governmentality what Michel Foucault calls, scientific 'invention' of germ may be considered as 'logical, philosophical and historiographical.' Furthermore, the Meiji medicine men preferred Koch's to Pasteur's laboratory framework, not because the former was scientific than the latter but because Koch's programs were more compatible with imperial needs. The objective of this paper is to investigate four ways in which hygienic modernity had been established in Meiji Japan; (i) how Meiji imperialists perceived and managed to control Japanese hygienic condition, (ii) how Meijileading doctors learned about the German modern system of hygiene to consolidate Meiji empire; (iii) how modern germ theory functioned as the formation of imperial bodies in Meiji period; and (iv) how modern military hygiene contributed to Japanese defeat of Russia. Although I try to contend that modern hygiene was adopted as one of the most significant strategies for intensifying and extending the Meiji empire, this paper has some limits in not identifying how Japanese perception of infectious diseases were culturally adaptive to sciencebased hygienic programs the Meiji administrators had installed.
Communicable Diseases/*history ; Disease Transmission, Infectious/*history ; Germany ; History, 19th Century ; History, 20th Century ; Hygiene/*history ; Japan ; Philosophy, Medical ; Public Health Administration/*history ; State Medicine/*history

In the 1950s and 1960s, Korea overcame the aftermath of the war and laid the foundations for modernization of economy and professionalization of medicine. The National Medical Services Law, enacted in 1951 was the first medical law to be legislated since the establishment of the Republic of Korea. The law provided a medical system for the traditional Korean medical practitioners, activated opening of hospitals through report-only system and prohibition of interference in medical practice, and facilitated mobilization of the doctors by the government. The Medical Law, legislated in 1962 by the Park Jong-Hee administration contained practice license system, regular practice reporting system and practice designation, thereby strengthening the government control on the medical practitioners, inducing professionalism and high-quality of medical practitioners and abolished unlicensed medical practitioners such as acupuncturists, moxa cauterists and bone setters. The Medical Assistant Law of 1963 was introduced so that medical examination and assistance could be carried out under supervision of professional doctors. To reduce areas without healthcare system, region-specified medical practitioners got licensure and a community doctor system was organized. However, due to expensive medical fees in comparison to economic status and medical needs of patients, shortage of doctors, low accessibility to hospitals led to the prevalence of illegal medical practice by unlicensed practitioners. Absence of national budget or policy on the health care system and the American-style noninterference medical system were other factors causing the situation. Government, Korean Medical Associations and Korean Dental Association tried, without success, to exercise control over the unlicensed medical practice. President Park Jong-Hee had to introduce a special law concerning the health-care related crimes with life sentence as the highest penalty. While the government put modernization before social welfare, operated on a policy of state-controlled medical care system, and doctors achieved specialization system similar to that of the United States, the public had to suffer, being treated by unlicensed medical practitioners. Inevitably, the need for a national medical practitioner supply plan and a policy to support health service was raised.
Health Policy/history ; History, 20th Century ; Humans ; Legislation, Medical/*history ; Licensure/*history ; Private Sector/history ; Public Health/history ; Republic of Korea ; State Medicine/*history

This article traces early career of Kong Pyung Woo, a public figure famous for being the first doctor of medicine in ophthalmology with Korean ethnicity in 1936, for founding and running the oldest and still the most successful private eye clinic in Korea since 1937, and also for his engagement in development of Korean mechanical typewriter since 1949. His case is an illustrative example of how a Korean under the Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945) could build up a career to become a medical doctor, taking full advantage of the chances available. Kong, born in 1907 in a rural province in northwestern Korea, acquired a doctor's license in 1926 by passing the qualifying examination of the Government General in Korea. The qualification test was in itself an outcome of colonial education system, in which the supply of medical doctors by only a few tertiary schools could not meet the demands. After working for a state hospital for one year, Kong volunteered to be a visiting student at Keijo Medical College, to fulfill his dream of "becoming a prominent bacteriologist like Noguchi Hideyo." He was soon officially appointed as a tutor at Department of Ophthalmology, as he had been endorsed by professor Satake Shyuichi for his diligence and earnestness. Satake also encouraged Kong to pursue a doctoral degree and recommended him to Tokumitsu Yoshitomi, a professor in the Department of Pathology at Keijo Imperial University, so that Kong could experience cutting-edge research at the imperial university. Kong reported on his experiments on the pathology of chorioretinitis centralis by 1935. He submitted the reports to Nagoya Imperial University, Japan, as a doctoral thesis, and eventually obtained the degree in 1936, which was the first Korean doctor of medicine in ophthalmology. The doctorate made Kong a public figure and he opened his own private clinic in 1937. The Kong Eye Clinic was the first private eye clinic owned and run by Korean, and soon became popular in Seoul. Kong's fame as a successful practitioner gradually made him express his opinion on various social issues. Kong did not hesitate to utilize his influence to advocate the new "modern" way of living, with special emphasis on speed and efficiency. His engagement in typewriter business since 1949 may also be attributed to his firm belief in the value of speed and efficiency. Although he could not fulfill his dream of being an academic, Kong still remains as an important figure in the history of medicine in modern Korea, not only for his publicity. By closely analyzing Kong's personal story, one can see various aspects of opportunities, personal networks, social norms, and limitations within the colonial setting.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Chorioretinitis ; Commerce ; Education ; Education, Medical ; History of Medicine ; Hospitals, State ; Humans ; Japan ; Korea* ; Licensure ; Ophthalmology* ; Pathology ; Running ; Seoul