Doctors who saved our nation

It is generally accepted that medical doctor is a profession far from the political activities. However, there is an old saying that a great doctor cures a country while a small doctor cures a patient. This saying reveals that doctor's curing activities were not strictly limited to curing a patient's physical diseases. In fact, it is not difficult to find doctors who dedicated themselves for curing diseased countries. Sun Yat-sen, the first president and founding father of the Republic of China, was the exemplary figure of the great doctor who cured the nation. When Japanese colonized Korea, many doctors dedicated themselves to liberation activities. Some of them moved to Manchuria, China and even Mongol to continue their struggle against Japanese rule. Medical students were at the front line of the March first movement in 1919 which was a nationwide protest movement against Japanese unjustified occupation of Korea. During the Korean war, a doctor called Hyun Bong Hak saved the lives of more than 100,000 refugees by transporting them from Hungnam harbor to Koje island. And Chang Ki Ryeo opened a free clinic in Busan to take care of the refugees gathered there. The lives of those great doctors of yesterday invite us to reflect our lives as a doctor today.

A History of Malaria in Modern Korea 1876-1945 / 의사학

Although it is not certain when malaria began to appear in Korea, malaria is believed to have been an endemic disease from ancient times. It was Dr. H. N. Allen (1858-1932) who made the first description and diagnosis of malaria in terms of Western medicine. In his first year report (1885) of Korean Government Hospital he mentioned malaria as the most prevalent disease. Very effective anti-malarial drug quinine was imported and it made great contribution in treating malaria. After Japan had annexed Korea in 1910, policies for public health system were fundamentally revised. Japan assumed control of Korean medical institutions and built high-quality Western hospitals for the health care of Japanese residents. The infectious diseases which were under special surveillance were cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, typhus, scarlet fever, smallpox, and paratyphoid fever. Among chronic infectious diseases tuberculosis and leprosy were those under special control. Malaria, however, was not one of these specially controlled infectious diseases although it was widely spread throughout the peninsula. But serious studies on malaria were carried out by Japanese medical scientists. In particular, a Japanese parasitologist Kobayasi Harujiro(1884-1969) carried out extensive studies on human parasites, including malaria, in Korea. According to his study, most of the malaria in Korea turned out to be tertian fever. In spite of its high prevalence, malaria did not draw much attention from the colonial authorities and no serious measure was taken since tertian fever is a mild form of malaria caused by Plasmodium vivax and is not so much fatal as tropical malaria caused by P. falciparum. And tertian malaria was easily controlled by taking quinine. Although the majority of malaria in Korea was tertian fever, other types were not absent. Quartan fever was not rarely reported in 1930s. The attitude of colonial authorities toward malaria in Korea was contrasted with that in Taiwan. After Japan had set out to colonize Taiwan as a result of Sino-Japanese war, malaria in Taiwan was a big obstacle to the colonization process. Therefore, a lot of medical scientists were asked to engage the malaria research in order to handle health problems in colonized countries caused by malaria. Unlike the situation in Taiwan, malaria in Korea did not cause a serious health problem as in Taiwan. However, its risk was not negligible. In 1933 there were almost 130,000 malaria patients in Korea and 1,800 patients among them died of malaria. The Japanese Government General took measures to control malaria especially during the 1930s and the number of patients decreased. However, as Japan engaged in the World War II, the general hygienic state of the society worsened and the number of malarial patients increased. The worsened situation remains the same after Liberation (1945) and during the Korean war (1950-53).

The Concept of Disease in Galen / 의사학

Galen was with no doubt a great authority in ancient medicine rivalled only with "the father of medicine" Hippocrates His medicine inherited not only Hippocratic tradition which is characterized by dynamic pathology but also Alexandrian medicine which made a great contribution to anatomy He did not generalize all the pathological phenomena according to one dogmatic theory His medicine was open to all kinds of medicine but he was quite selective in receiving different medical traditions Galen defined disease as impairment of bodily activities Whatever that impairs the bodily activities is the cause of disease Galen's pathology is built upon two heterogeneous medical traditions 1) Dynamic pathology of the Hippocratic medicine but which ignored anatomy 2) Anatomical pathology of Alexandrian medicine Galen integrated these two different traditions by his concept of disease His definition of disease impairment of bodily activities made it possible to harmonize these two different traditions otherwise which would have been conflictual It is Galen's great contribution to Western medicine to have laid a foundation of pathology by combining physiological and anatomical point of view.