Korean Journal of Medical History最新文献

{"title":"The Gradual Establishment and Historical Implications of Hospital Ship Mobile Medical Services along Korea's Western and Southern Coasts in the 1960s-1970s.","authors":"Changhoon Shin","doi":"10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.539","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.539","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The term muui (doctorless) refers to a state of absolute deprivation of medical care. In modern Korean history, chronic shortages and regional disparities of medical resources resulted in the widespread existence of muuichon (doctorless village). In response, the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs implemented a series of policies and initiatives, including the establishment of a public health center system and the mobilization of public doctors. Yet the very term muuichon also suggested that the problem of public health was inseparable from that of space. Above all, there was a distinct spatial hierarchy of medical accessibility, extending from the capital, Seoul, to major cities, smaller cities, rural villages, and, finally, to remote mountainous and island regions. Among these areas, the islands along the western and southern coast faced significant geographical obstacles, making even minimal access to medical services exceedingly difficult. Hospital ships emerged as a historical product of this intertwined medical-spatial context. By the mid-1960s, as the public doctor mobilization program came to an end, local health authorities and private medical institutions in island regions devised a plan to construct specialized ships equipped with medical facilities and dispatch them to circulate among muuido (doctorless island). Consequently, Korea's first hospital ships, Gyeonggi and Badaui Byeol, began operations and helped fill the gap left by the absence of medical institutions in island regions. In doing so, they moved beyond conventional approaches tied to fixed administrative boundaries and pioneered a healthcare delivery system adaptable to the region's distinctive spatial characteristics. Moreover, this system demonstrated its effectiveness by requiring relatively modest expenditures while extending medical services to islands throughout the region. During the 1970s, the central government also came to recognize the advantages of this system and sought to institutionalize mobile medical services aboard hospital ships. In the mid-to-late 1970s, in particular, President Park Chung Hee spearheaded the construction of numerous hospital ships, thereby establishing the material foundation for the system. In 1978, the island regions along the western and southern coasts were reorganized into nine medical service districts, each assigned one or two hospital ships under the newly established Hospital Ship Medical Service District System. As a result, the system followed a reversed trajectory in which an initiative first pioneered at the local level was subsequently integrated into and institutionalized at the national level. This process exemplifies a dimension of dynamism in South Korean medical administration that cannot be fully captured through a state-centered perspective or adequately explained by structural accounts based solely on budgets or fiscal considerations. Yet, in the final phase of institutionalization, President Park Chung H","PeriodicalId":42441,"journal":{"name":"Korean Journal of Medical History","volume":"35 2","pages":"539-574"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13631482/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149116150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Publication and Dissemination of Books on Cowpox Vaccination and Changes in the Perception of Vaccination in Early 19^th Century China - Focusing on Xiyang Zhongdou Lun (Western Vaccination Theory) and Yindulue (A Brief Treatise on Vaccination).","authors":"Seongsu Kim","doi":"10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.811","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In 1805, Alexander Pearson administered the cowpox vaccine, which had been transported to Macau, to the Chinese people, marking the beginning of the first cowpox vaccinations in China. Under the patronage of Zheng Chongqian, Pearson published Yingjili-guo Xinchu Zhongdou Qishu (A Wonderful Book on the Newly Discovered Method of Vaccination in England), the first book on cowpox vaccination in China, while concurrently passing down the vaccination method to four Chinese individuals: Liang Hui, Qiu Xi, Zhang Yao, and Tan Guo. Notably, Qiu Xi authored Yindulue (A Brief Treatise on Vaccination), successfully spreading awareness of cowpox vaccination throughout China, and its influence was so immense that it was reprinted dozens of times throughout the 19th century following its first publication in 1817. However, looking strictly at the first half of the 19th century, the process of spreading the cowpox vaccination method was far from easy. The area where it was introduced was the southernmost region of China, and the process of expanding its reach and propagating outward from there was sluggish. During this period, the greatest catalyst for the dissemination of cowpox vaccination was Qiu Xi's Yindulue. Although works like Zhongdou Qishu and Xiyang Zhongdou Lun existed prior to Yindulue, it was Yindulue that achieved massive success by providing appropriate solutions to various practical problems that arose during the spread of cowpox. Qiu Xi's interpretation of cowpox vaccination using traditional medical theories, an approach for which he is highly credited, was a continuation and development of the attempts made in Xiyang Zhongdou Lun. Unlike Huang Anhui, who attributed the cause of smallpox to \"heart fire\" (xinhua), Qiu Xi focused on \"fetal toxin\" (taidu), a concept easily understood by the general public, which seems to have garnered much greater public consensus. However, the enduring popularity and widespread use of Yindulue can also be attributed to other practical aspects presented in the text, such as the operational guidelines for vaccination bureaus-including establishing vaccination cycles for lymph (dumiao) harvesting and managing gratuities-as well as implementing measures to prevent infectious diseases to ensure the safety of the lymph, and improving preservation methods to extend its storage life. The dissemination process of cowpox vaccination is also closely tied to the reprinting of Yindulue, and an analysis of the texts included in the book reveals several key facts. First, the introduction of cowpox vaccination to Beijing around 1828 was a milestone event in its dissemination. This meant that the spread of vaccination did not rely solely on moving northward from the stronghold of Guangdong, but rather, transmission originating from Beijing also played a major role. While Guangdong was a remote region at the southernmost tip of China, Beijing was the capital of the Qing Dynasty and the political and economic center, which ga","PeriodicalId":42441,"journal":{"name":"Korean Journal of Medical History","volume":"35 2","pages":"811-870"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13631481/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149116156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aelius Aristides in the Context of Asclepian Healing Records.","authors":"Sangduk Lee","doi":"10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.871","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.871","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study traces the typological and historical evolution of Asclepian healing narratives by conducting a comparative analysis of three pivotal texts: the 4th-century BCE public healing inscriptions (Iamata) from the Asclepian sanctuary in Epidauros, the Roman inscription of Poplius Granius Rufus from Lebena in Crete, and the 2nd-century CE autobiographical text, Sacred Tales (Hieroi Logoi), by Aelius Aristides. While Asclepian worship maintains a structural continuity through the shared spiritual media of incubation and divine dreams, it underwent a profound narrative transformation as it intersected with contemporary intellectual and scientific trends. Through a philological examination, this paper demonstrates that the verb dokeo (\"it seemed\"), which functioned in the Epidaurian inscriptions as a third-person formula employed by priests to objectively describe supernatural miracles, was strategically reused by Aristides. Through a first-person narrative, Aristides elevated the epistemic uncertainty of the dream (onar) into the vivid, waking reality of divine epiphany (hypar). Furthermore, this study establishes a three-stage developmental model of healing narratives: the first stage is dominated by immediate, supernatural miracles performed upon passive patients; the second stage witnesses the systematic integration of advanced pharmacology and rational medical prescriptions of the Roman Imperial era. The final stage, exemplified by Aristides' Sacred Tales, subsumes this empirical medical knowledge while shifting the narrative locus entirely toward the individual. In particular, Aristides brings four distinct personas to the fore: his pilgrimage to Athens and the Lyceum to show his close connection with Greek culture, his dream-encounters with Roman governors, his exclusive intimacy with Asclepius, and his spiritual competitions with classical masters like Socrates, Demosthenes, Thucydides, and even Alexander the Great. These elements reflect the appropriation of the healing narrative by the hypertrophied ego and cultural cultivation (paideia) characteristic of the Second Sophistic elite. This study underscores how the text evolved the ancient healing narrative into a profound medium for intellectual self-fashioning and sophisticated religious literature.</p>","PeriodicalId":42441,"journal":{"name":"Korean Journal of Medical History","volume":"35 2","pages":"871-900"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13631479/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149116203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rural Medicine and the Farmers' \"Right to Health\" in 1980s South Korea: The Rural Health Insurance and the Health Insurance Reform Movement.","authors":"Dahye Jeong","doi":"10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.635","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The history of Korean health security is usually told as a compressed achievement, from workplace insurance in 1977 to universal coverage in 1989 and unified National Health Insurance in 2000. Departing from that framework, this article places the Rural Health Insurance of 1988, which extended coverage to farming and fishing villages, within the longer history of rural medical marginalization since liberation, in which the equitable distribution of medical care remained an unmet task across regimes. It asks how farmers' health briefly emerged as a social category and was then reduced to a dispute over insurance administration. The program rested on weak foundations. Rural facilities built up since the late 1970s functioned poorly, and the regional-insurance pilots begun in 1981 had stalled under chronic deficits by 1985. Implementation was nevertheless advanced to 1988 amid agrarian crisis and the pressures of democratization. Resistance was immediate and widespread, the first occasion on which the affected population itself demanded institutional reform. Farmers contested not only premiums but their assessment, referral districts imposed on a scarce supply, the undemocratic insurance societies, and the hazards of farm labor, from pesticide poisoning to \"farmer's syndrome,\" which lay outside the industrial accident insurance covering wage workers. Joined by health professionals and the urban poor, these grievances were articulated as a claim to a \"right to health.\" The claim receded almost as quickly. The article attributes the retreat to conditions rather than movement failure: a coalition of such breadth required a common agenda, and the administration of insurance determines how contributions are levied and pooled, not where medical care exists. Concentration on integration was reasonable under those conditions, yet it left the distribution of medical resources and farmers' health unaddressed. Universal coverage is read here not as a completed institution but as the history of a problem posed, transformed, and unresolved.</p>","PeriodicalId":42441,"journal":{"name":"Korean Journal of Medical History","volume":"35 2","pages":"635-688"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13631477/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149116143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Formation of the Premedical Course in Korea and the Instability of the Premedical Education Regime, 1945-1979.","authors":"Kyu Won Lee","doi":"10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.419","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article examines the formation and contested governance of Korea's two-year premedical course from 1945 to 1979. Drawing on records from the U.S. military government and the University of Minnesota as well as university documents, medical journals, newspapers, and student publications, it asks why this standard route into medical training repeatedly faced proposals for transfer, abolition, and integration. Focusing on Seoul National University (SNU), the article also considers variations by institutional type and region. The functionally hybrid system combined the post-Flexnerian American principle of placing general education and basic science at the university level with a progression model documented at SNU, where completion of the premedical course normally led directly to the four-year medical phase without a second competitive selection. This model more closely resembled the Preparatory Course at Keijō Imperial University and preparatory courses at some Japanese private universities than the old-system higher schools, which did not guarantee admission to a particular imperial university or faculty. No direct transmission is documented; \"hybrid\" is used here as an analytical rather than genealogical term. \"Instability\" refers not to the division of authority but to the failure to institutionalize comprehensive and durable coordination across student selection and quotas, administration and student records, curriculum, teaching, and decisions regarding completion and progression. The statutory 2+4 framework persisted even as coordination among these domains remained unsettled. A two-year standard for premedical education appeared in U.S. military government documents by early 1946. In 1947, Edwin L. Miller, the premedical supervisor, justified the two-year standard and elaborated on it while noting a U.S. trend toward three or four years of premedical study. The 1953 revision of the Enforcement Decree of the Education Act divided six-year medical education into two-year premedical and fouryear medical phases and assigned oversight of the premedical curriculum at comprehensive universities to colleges of liberal arts and sciences. It specified neither the aims of premedical education nor principles for its articulation with the medical phase. A late-1975 revision, effective in 1976, deleted this governance clause without establishing a general framework for curricular oversight. Governance disputes recurred from the late 1950s through the 1970s. In 1957, deans of medical colleges at national universities called for transferring premedical education to their colleges or abolishing the course; a newspaper reported a Higher Education Bureau proposal to place selected basic science subjects under medical-college administration. At SNU, a joint faculty committee coordinated policy in 1961; calls for medical-college governance and an undivided six-year structure resurfaced in the 1970s. A comparative study of premedical curricula at fourt","PeriodicalId":42441,"journal":{"name":"Korean Journal of Medical History","volume":"35 2","pages":"419-468"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13631485/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149116123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unavoidable Adverse Reactions: A Medical-Historical Study of the Demise of Five-Stone Powder(Wushisan, ) in Tang-Song China.","authors":"Hanshin Kim","doi":"10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.731","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.731","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wushisan(Five-Stone Powder) was one of the most widely consumed mineral-based medicines from the Six Dynasties through the Tang period. Modern scholarship, however, has often portrayed it primarily as a symbol of aristocratic decadence and moral excess. This interpretation, shaped largely by the enlightenment discourse that emerged after Lu Xun and reinforced by modern biomedical perspectives emphasizing its toxicity and adverse effects, has tended to overlook why the medicine continued to be used for centuries and the therapeutic rationale and technical foundations that sustained its popularity. Rather than reducing the rise and decline of Wushisan to an intellectual or cultural phenomenon, this study reexamines its history from the perspectives of the material properties of the drug, contemporary medical practice, and the development of refining and paozhi(pharmaceutical processing) techniques for mineral medicines. Drawing upon medical texts such as the Jingui Yaolüe, Ishinpō, Zhubing Yuanhou Lun, and Beiji Qianjin Yaofang, together with historical sources including the Shishuo Xinyu, Jinshu, Nanshi, and Zizhi Tongjian, this article traces changing perceptions of Wushisan from the Six Dynasties period through the Song dynasty. The analysis demonstrates that physicians of the Six Dynasties regarded Wushisan as a superior medicine(shangyao) possessing remarkable therapeutic and tonic properties. Adverse reactions were generally attributed not to inherent defects in the medicine itself but to improper methods of administration and failures in post-treatment regimen. Consequently, medical discussions focused less on abandoning the drug than on maximizing its efficacy while minimizing its side effects through appropriate dosage, dietary regulation, and aftercare. During the Sui and Tang periods, however, physicians such as Chao Yuanfang and Sun Simiao began to explain these adverse reactions in terms of more systematic pathological mechanisms, shifting attention from the behavior of the patient to the material properties and toxicity of the medicine itself. This change did not entail a complete rejection of Wushisan but instead encouraged greater emphasis on refining mineral ingredients, improving pharmaceutical processing techniques, and standardizing prescriptions in order to control toxicity. By the Song dynasty, state-sponsored pharmaceutical standardization and increasingly sophisticated paozhi techniques enabled toxic mineral drugs to be prescribed in safer and more carefully processed forms. As a result, the traditional therapeutic logic of Wushisan, which relied on stimulating the body's internal release of medicinal potency after ingestion, gradually lost its medical legitimacy, while its therapeutic functions were absorbed into newly refined mineral medicines and standardized pharmacological systems. The disappearance of Wushisan should therefore be understood not simply as the elimination of a dangerous drug but as the outcome of a","PeriodicalId":42441,"journal":{"name":"Korean Journal of Medical History","volume":"35 2","pages":"731-770"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13631474/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149116267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Nature of Colonial Public Healthcare: The Establishment of Sariwon Provincial Hospital.","authors":"SeongRyong Noh","doi":"10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.341","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.341","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper analyzes the structural limitations of the colonial public healthcare system by examining the establishment of Sariwon Provincial Hospital in Hwanghae Province under Japanese colonial rule. In the 1920s, Sariwon emerged as a central city in Hwanghae Province, driven by the development of railway transportation and commerce. However, modern medical institutions and public healthcare facilities remained severely inadequate. Under these circumstances, the local community of Sariwon initiated a movement to establish a provincial hospital. The movement, however, faced a crisis as the Government-General of Korea responded passively due to budgetary concerns. To persuade the Government-General to support the project, the Sariwon community proposed to bear a portion of the establishment costs. As a result, part of the financial burden was transferred to the local residents. These costs were distributed unevenly across different social classes and sub-regions, causing conflicts within the local community. The establishment of Sariwon Provincial Hospital demonstrates how colonial public healthcare was not a universal welfare system funded by the state, but rather a structure built upon the financial burdens of local residents. While shifting the fiscal responsibility onto the local community, the Government-General of Korea appropriated the visible achievement of constructing a modern medical facility as a means to legitimize its colonial rule. In this sense, public healthcare in local communities, represented by provincial hospitals, functioned as a low-cost, high-efficiency mechanism of governance.</p>","PeriodicalId":42441,"journal":{"name":"Korean Journal of Medical History","volume":"35 2","pages":"341-373"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13631486/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149116179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Publication of Yuyaoyuanfang () and Transformations of Yuan Official Medicine.","authors":"Won Cho","doi":"10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.771","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.771","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The Mongol conquest of Eurasia in the thirteenth century facilitated the movement of people, materials, and knowledge across vast regions. Medicine was no exception. In response to the practical demands of military campaigns and imperial rule, Mongol rulers actively incorporated medical personnel and knowledge from conquered regions. After the fall of the Jin dynasty, North Chinese medical institutions and traditions became an important foundation for the organization of medical administration under Mongol rule. This article examines the Yuyaoyuanfang as a key text that reveals the character of official medicine in the Yuan dynasty and the reconfiguration of Jin-Yuan medical knowledge. Although the structure of the Yuyaoyuanfang closely resembles that of the Taiping huimin heji jufang, the representative official formulary of the Northern Song, its prescriptions were not simply copied from the Song model. Rather, the text selectively incorporated and reorganized prescriptions from the Jin imperial pharmacy, Song and Jin medical formularies, Jin-Yuan physicians, Daoist secret recipes, and the practical needs of Yuan court medicine. The independent section on facial and cosmetic preparations, \"Ximian yaomen\", further shows that Yuan official medicine included not only the treatment of disease but also concerns with bodily care, beauty, and longevity. An examination of the prescriptions, especially those in the \"Zhifeng yaomen\", shows that the Yuyaoyuanfang incorporated earlier medical traditions while also reflecting new developments in North Chinese medicine after the Jin period. Some prescriptions are related to texts such as the Shengji zonglu, while others show connections with Jin physicians such as Liu Wansu and Zhang Yuansu. At the same time, many prescriptions preserve authoritative names from earlier formularies while altering their ingredients, indications, or methods of preparation. These cases of identical names with different formulas demonstrate that the Yuyaoyuanfang was not a mere compilation of earlier medical texts, but an official formulary that selectively transformed and standardized medical knowledge within the institutional framework of Yuan official medicine. In this sense, the Yuyaoyuanfang is a representative source for understanding the transmission, selection, and reconfiguration of East Asian medical knowledge under Mongol rule.</p>","PeriodicalId":42441,"journal":{"name":"Korean Journal of Medical History","volume":"35 2","pages":"771-809"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13631484/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149116161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Formation and Reconfiguration of an Informal Medical Workforce: Hansen's Disease Patients Trained at the Sorokdo Medical Training School and Korea's Leprosy Healthcare System, 1950s-1980s.","authors":"Jae Hyung Kim","doi":"10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.503","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article examines the Sorokdo Medical Training School (Noksan Medical Training School) and the lives of its graduates, focusing on their role in Korea's Hansen's disease healthcare system between the late 1940s and the 1980s. Existing studies have primarily portrayed Hansen's disease patients as objects of medical intervention, segregation, and state control. While such perspectives have illuminated the history of confinement, stigma, sterilization, and discrimination, they have paid relatively little attention to the active roles that patients themselves played within the healthcare system. By analyzing hospital records, government documents, overseas reports, and oral histories, this study reconstructs the experiences of Hansen's disease patients who were trained as medical personnel and explores their contributions to the operation of Korea's leprosy healthcare system. Established in 1949 at Sorokdo National Hospital, the Medical Training School was designed to address the severe shortage of medical personnel in Hansen's disease institutions and settlement villages. Graduates were deployed not only to Sorokdo but also to leprosy hospitals and settlement communities throughout the country, where they performed a wide range of medical tasks, including laboratory testing, drug dispensing, wound care, surgery assistance, rehabilitation, and outpatient treatment. In many settlements, where physicians were absent or visited only occasionally, they effectively functioned as the primary providers of everyday medical care. Their activities were therefore essential to both the treatment of Hansen's disease patients and the implementation of the state's leprosy control system. The article argues that these graduates constituted a form of \"informal medical workforce\" operating within, rather than outside, the state healthcare system. Although they acquired substantial clinical experience and were highly valued in practice, they were never fully recognized as professional medical practitioners. As Korea's healthcare system became increasingly professionalized from the 1960s onward, their broad medical responsibilities were gradually restricted. Yet their story was not simply one of exclusion. While some lost their positions within medical institutions, others adapted to the changing system by becoming leprosy control workers, laboratory technicians, radiological technicians, medical assistants, or operators of pharmaceutical sales outlets. Their experiences reveal how the professionalization of medicine simultaneously marginalized and incorporated non-professional healthcare workers. Methodologically, the study combines institutional records with oral histories in order to examine both the administrative position of these workers and their own understanding of medical expertise. The oral accounts show that graduates built practical competence through repeated clinical work, anatomical training, and the transmission of skills among senior and juni","PeriodicalId":42441,"journal":{"name":"Korean Journal of Medical History","volume":"35 2","pages":"503-538"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13631476/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149116134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lee Byeong-haeng's Taegeuk Acupuncture and the Debate over the Modernization of Korean Medicine.","authors":"Chaekun Oh","doi":"10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13081/kjmh.2026.35.375","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study examines the life and scholarly achievements of Lee Byeong-haeng (1906-1975), who passed the Qualifying Examination for Korean Medical Doctors in 1954 and subsequently established himself as both a clinician and a theorist. By exploring one dimension of the debate over the \"modernization\" of traditional Korean medicine in which Lee played a significant role, the study seeks to illuminate the intellectual shifts that shaped the 1960s and 1970s, formative decades in the development of contemporary Korean medicine. The analysis draws on major works by Lee, including Annotation of Midnight-Midday Ebb-Flow Acupuncture, Ground and Reground: The Origins and Currents of Acupuncture, and more than twenty academic articles in journals such as Sylva Medica and the Journal of Korean Medicine, along with contemporary medical periodicals and newspapers. These sources allow the study to reconstruct the debate over modernization from multiple perspectives. Despite the absence of formal university training, Lee established himself as an authority in acupuncture through sustained self-directed study. In 1971, he developed Taegeuk Acupuncture, a Korean acupuncture method that integrated the visceral theory of Sasang constitutional medicine, as formulated by Lee Je-ma , into acupuncture theory and practice. Defining yin-yang and deficiency-excess as foundational principles, Lee Byeong-haeng emphasized the primacy of traditional clinical practice. As chair of the Academic Committee of the Korean Fellowship of Korean Medicine Practitioners, an association of doctors licensed through the Qualifying Examination rather than through university training, he engaged in public debates with younger, university-trained practitioners over research methodology and educational structures. Whereas this younger cohort prioritized scientific modernization through Western medical frameworks and modern diagnostic technologies, Lee advocated for an educational approach grounded in traditional principles and emphasized the development of practical acupuncture techniques. Lee's career provides an important case demonstrating that the internal logic of traditional Korean medicine could be sustained and developed through clinical practice, even in the absence of systematic state support or formal institutional training. His confrontation with the younger generation illuminates the tensions among practitioners who shared a common professional identity but pursued divergent visions of what the \"modernization\" of traditional Korean medicine should entail. His case thus offers a valuable historical perspective on the broader trajectory of modern Korean medicine.</p>","PeriodicalId":42441,"journal":{"name":"Korean Journal of Medical History","volume":"35 2","pages":"375-417"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13631475/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149116152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}