Editing style of Imwon Gyeongjeji / Inje-ji and inclusion of the medicinal knowledge of the late period of Joseon: Comparing mainly with Dongui-Bogam / 의사학

ImwonGyeongjeji which was created by Seo Yu-gu in the first half of the 19th century is a encyclopedia of practical use in rural life. It consists of 113 volumes, 16 fields, and 2.52 million total characters. Of these, the field of medicine comes 11th of the contents covering 28 volumes and 1.1 million characters. Its name is Inje-ji. This paper examines the academic background of Seo Yu-gu and his life work briefly, and investigates the characteristics of medical knowledge of late Joseon period contained in the Imwon Gyeongjeji / Inje-ji. Here, we made key comparisons especially with Dongui-bogam, Joseon's leading medical book. Of the pioneers of medical history studies of Joseon, a Japanese researcher Miki Sakae has made a negative evaluation to Inje-ji. But after concrete investigation we have come to conclude as follows. First, familial ancestors of Seo Yu-gu were engaged in the introduction of foreign-language books, so Seo Yu-gu as a officer of proof-reading and editing of the various books, also had a lot of knowledge on the medical books ever in history. On this background and experience, for over 36 years from 1806 retirement from official position to his death, he had compiled and edited Imwon Gyeongjeji. Second, unlike Dongui-bogam which included improving health skill, Inje-ji focused on curing medicine readily accessible from the major population of that time. Its main features are as follows: i) prescriptions directly linked to the diseases and symptoms, ii) greatly increased medicinal knowledge especially on infectious diseases and trauma, iii) detailed index easy to look up for prescription and iv) his 'own opinions'[an-seol] which can indicate relevant contents within the book and organically combines the whole knowledge in it. Third, "Inje-ji" utilizing medical books in China and Korea even those of Japan, collected more massively almost all the medical knowledge, new illness, herbs of local area, private prescription. Meanwhile Inje-ji modified the errors of the older medical books like Dongui Bogam or Bencao Gangmu, expressed its own subjective views about controversial topics. In summary "Inje-ji" can be the last general medical book which collected and edited almost all the medical knowledge of the period in the East Asia with its own editing format. In addition it is recognized that it pursued an evidence-based medicine and the practical medicine relieving the people, rather than medico-philosophical theories in oriental traditional medicine which was criticized by many critical intellectuals afterwards. Given the scrutiny, it seems that evaluation of the "Inje-ji" by Miki Sakae should be revised by thorough investigations. We are just on the starting line of the Inje-ji research in earnest meaning, and expect this research would give more fruitful and deep perspective in the area of Korea history of medicine.

Influence of Compendium of Materia Medica on the Materia Medica in the late period of the Chosun Dynasty / 의사학

In this paper, I investigated the influence of Compendium of Materia Medica (CM) on Records for Rural Life of Chosun Gentlemen (RRC), and refuted Miki Sakae's opinion, CM did not have much impact on the Materia Medica in the late period of the Chosun Dynasty. When Li Shizhen published CM, it resulted in a shift of mainstream of Materia Medica in Eastern Asia from Classified Emergency Materia Medica to CM and a new categorizing system of Materia Medica by CM led to the division of Materia Medica into medicine and natural history. It is obvious that doctors of the Chosun Dynasty also adopted the latest achievements of Materia Medica by CM, but so far there have been few studies to clarify this. Seo yugu was a scholar of the Realist School of Confucianism during the late period of the Chosun Dynasty, and RRC is his representative work. RRC is a massive encyclopedia of natural history that covers vast areas of science from agriculture, floriculture, writing and drawing, architecture, diet, and medicine, among others which absorbed the achievements of CM, the best Materia Medica book at that time. Miki Sakae also highly regarded the encyclopedic knowledge of RRC, but devalued the results of Materia Medica. He only described a part of RRC's Materia Medica, nurturing volume, on the view of life nurturing and mentioned that it had been strongly influenced by China. According to this study, a large portion of RRC, especially regarding Materia Medica, depends on CM. Seo yugu had accepted the categorizing system and new medicinal information of CM, at the same time he modified the categorizing system of CM practically by the subject of each volume of RRC. We can find many quotations of CM except the nurturing volume, but other books, Treasured Mirror of Eastern Medicine, Materia Medica for Relief of Famines are also quoted. Furthermore, Seo yugu emphasized the differences of natural environments between Chosun and China, and specified the editing criteria, "to be useful in Chosun." This is the most obvious evidence that Materia Medica of Chosun had not remained in the framework of Treasured Mirror of Eastern Medicine which succeeded Classified Emergency Materia Medica, but had been developed into medicine and natural history based on CM.