Korean Journal of Medical History最新文献

The purpose of this paper is to analyze discussions on the matter of priority in treatment and prevention that took place in the medical community, the government and social hygiene associations to tuberculosis referred to as one of the national calamity in France at the turn of the 20th century. In other words, it is to show that treatment and prevention have complementary properties in France's anti-tuberculosis movement, considering the discussions on which institutions should preferably be expanded - between the Sanatorium that values medical treatment and the anti-tuberculosis dispensary that values social prevention. Tuberculosis, which is known to have existed from the ancient times, spread to the era of industrialization and urbanization, resulting in a large loss of lives in the second half of the 19th century following cholera in the first half of the century. Starting in Germany in the middle of this century, Sanatorium established a treatment for tuberculosis patients with air therapy, proper exercise or rest, and diet. In France, a public Sanatorium was built for the lower class, not like a luxury resort style Sanatorium for the wealthy class, from the 1890s. The spread was slow, however, due to financial problems. In the 1900s, anti-tuberculosis dispensary as a health center were increasingly built in working class quarters. The debate over whether to support the sanatorium or the dispensary was ignited at first, but since the mid-to-late 1900s, the two institutions' roles, namely, medical treatment and social prevention, have been recognized as complementary. The Anti-tuberculosis dispensary Act of 1916 and the Sanatorium Act of 1919 systematically supported the complementary relationship between treatment and prevention in fighting against tuberculosis.

In 1946, the U.S. Army established the 406th Medical General Laboratory as the central medical research institute for their new Asia-Pacific-occupied area. The primary mission of the 406th medical laboratory was to supplement the epidemiologic, sanitary, and diagnostic services available in other medical facilities and hospitals, and to investigate outbreaks of disease and conditions which affect or may affect the health of the people in the occupied area. At the time of its establishment, the 406th laboratory had considerable difficulties securing researchers, but it solved the related problems by actively cooperating with Japanese medical researchers and research institutes. According to the statistics in 1947, the 406th laboratory consisted of 46% of its total research personnel, Japanese researchers. The 406th medical laboratory's professional research departments included the department of Pathology, Serology, Bacteriology, Medical Zoology, Chemistry, Virus and Ricketts, Entomology (established in 1949), and Epidemiology (established in 1951). All research departments played a central role in the Asia-Pacific region in their professional fields. For example, the department of Pathology functioned as the "histopathology center of all hospitals in Japan, Korea, and the Mariana-Bonin Command" under the provision of "Army Regulation 40-410," and the department of Chemistry was called an "analytical chemistry laboratory for the Far East Command" because it performed various chemical experiments for many medical facilities in the area with insufficient research facilities.

If public health can be defined as "all activities to ensure universal medical use of the people and protect and promote health," it can be said that public health emerged in the process of developing the concept of hygiene in East Asia. While traditional hygiene emphasized individual curing and longevity, modern hygiene was the state in charge of individual body and discipline. East Asian countries had to practice modern tasks in the field of hygiene and medical care in line with the construction of modern countries, and it was considered legitimate for modern countries to intervene in individual bodies. As the demand for modern national construction became stronger, interest in public health rather than personal hygiene increased. In East Asia, a new interpretation of the concept of hygiene began in Japan. Sensai Nagayo(1838-1902) newly defined the concept of 'sanitation' to justify the physical intervention of the modern state in Meiji period. The concept of 'public health' began to be used in earnest in 1890, when Ogai Mori(1862-1922) translated Western-style health protection measures for the public as public health. Since then, public health has evolved into a universal social discourse in Japan. Japan's public health expanded to colonial Joseon, Taiwan, and China. Japan's victory in the Sino-Japanese War led East Asian countries to believe that hygiene was the root of the Japanese nation's power. In the early 20th century, the government of the Republic of China began to imitate the case of Japan while promoting modern education reform and institutional reform. Japanese-style 'public health' was transplanted into various hygiene laws and sanitary equipment. In Korea, modern hygiene was introduced and spread from the end of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, and the concept of 'public health' in Japan was mainly spreading. Public health in Japan was vaguely defined as an activity to protect and promote the health of the people, but in practice, it was focused on improving quarantine and environmental infrastructure. In response, the concept of American-style public health, which values prevention and treatment at the same time, has already begun to emerge under the Japanese colonial rule. In East Asia in the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese-style public health and American-style public health discourse competed, and measures to solve medical inequality were discussed in earnest. Interestingly, in common in East Asian countries, Actual Medical Expenses Campaigns to improve medical access at low cost and social medicine to universally provide prevention and treatment to the people have drawn attention. This was also a phenomenon caused by intensifying medical inequality as rapid urbanization and industrialization progressed in East Asian countries in the first half of the 20th century. Although it was impossible to resolve social contradictions or move toward fundamental reform of the national medical system due to the nat

This paper aims to historically re-evaluate the issues surrounding resident participation in health care and its legacy by examining the community participation in health care. In the 1970s and 1980s, community participation was one of crucial trends and a controversial topic in the international health as well as the international aid. Throughout the 1970s, local participation was regarded as one of essential elements for the access to basic healthcare and primary health care in developing countries. Community health projects which aimed to apply primary health care were implemented in rural areas and some urban areas in the 1970s and 1980s. Village Health Workers(VHWs) were a symbolic example of community participation in these projects. They consisted of local women and led health activities with simple skills in their villages. They served as a bridge between the project team and the residents. Health professionals expected them to be health leaders for "self-help" in health of their communities. In the mid-1980s, however, as the number of health facilities and professional health care workers increased, the activities of VHSs were decreased. The mixed understanding of the responsibilities and roles of VHSs among the health professionals affected the skeptical view on the achievement and effects of community participation in health care. In the mid-1980s, as the government officially organized the VHWs, the dilemma surrounding community participation intensified. When the community health projects were ended, most of the VHW organizations were also disbanded. After the projects, the spirit of community participation was only inherited by some healthcare movement organizations, such as medical cooperatives.

Previous studies on the history of Korean public health have shown that the public hygiene system in Korea under Japan's colonial rule relied heavily on the sanitary police, whose lack of expertise in hygiene reinforced the coercion and violence of the colonial public hygiene system. This view, however, has overlooked the existence and function of scientific knowledge, which underpinned the formulation and implementation of public hygiene policies. This paper explores the knowledge production in public hygiene by research institutes of Japan's colonial government in Korea, drawing on the Hygiene Laboratory as a case. The Hygiene Laboratory chiefly played three roles: first, providing advice on the sanitary police's crackdowns; second, quality inspection of food, beverage, and pharmaceuticals, and authorizing their production and distribution; third, investigating health resources such as conventional food ingredients, medicinal herbs, and drinking water to support the wartime public health policy of the colonial government in Korea. The third function in particular continued after the reorganization of the Hygiene Laboratory as the National Chemistry Laboratory in the postcolonial period. By tracing the Hygiene Laboratory's research activities, this paper highlights the complicated cooperation between expertise, practices, and institutions in the field of sanitation control in colonial Korea.

This article sets its investigative goal on determining the medical knowledge of medieval physicians from 1347-8 to 1351 concerning the causes of plague. As the plague killed a third of Europe's population, the contemporary witness at the time perceived God as the sender of this plague to punish the human society. However, physicians separated the religious and cultural explanation for the cause of this plague and instead seek the answer to this question elsewhere. Developing on traditional medical knowledges, physicians classified the possible range of the plague's causes into two areas: universal cause and individual/particular causes. In addition, they also sought to explain the causes by employing the traditional miasma-humoral theory. Unlike the previous ones, however, the plague during 1347-8 to 1351 killed the patients indiscriminately and also incredibly viciously. This phenomenon could not be explained by merely using the traditional medical knowledge and this idiosyncrasy led the physicians employ the poison theory to explain the causes of plague more pragmatically.

This study examines the characteristics of fifteen Jahye hospitals and provincial hospitals which were established or relocated during Governor-General Saito's regime. The purpose of this study is to analyze these hospitals by connecting them to the directions of Japanese colonial policies, the political beliefs of the governor-general, and their necessity by the local people. The period of expansion of provincial hospitals was divided in to three different periods. The periods are divided as follows: the first appointment of Saito as the governor-general, the period when Jahye hospitals turned into provincial hospitals, and when Saito got reappointed as the governor-general. It analyzes the natural and human geographical environment of each region where Jahye and the provincial hospitals were organized. Based on this analysis, it investigates the geopolitical features of Jahye and provincial hospitals which were established on the Governor-General Saito era. First, the areas that the Joseon Governor-General was interested in establishing Jahye and the provincial hospitals were military points useful for keeping Russia in check and managing the Manchurian region. In addition, those areas were rich in resources needed by Japan and transportation centers which were useful for the collection and distribution of goods. Second, the regions where provincial hospitals were built were rice-producing areas and leading export ports which were related to the rice production growth plan in the early 1920s. Also, the region's own economic power was able to run the hospitals. Third, at the stage of deciding to install a new provincial hospital, there were conflicts due to concerns over the deterioration of the status of nearby areas and existing regions and the difficulty of operating provincial hospitals. Fourth, each provincial hospital was divided into independent provincial hospitals, provincial branch members, provincial branch offices, etc. according to the region's size and population. Among them, some provincial branch members and provincial branch offices were promoted to independent hospitals due to the development and expansion of the region and the increase in the number of patients who used the hospitals. Also, it was revealed that in the process of expanding a city, some regional hospitals were turned into provincial hospitals. In conclusion, the provincial hospitals which were newly built in during the Governor-General Saito era were established in military and economically useful areas for the Japanese colonial rule. Also, transportation facilities such as railroads were installed in the areas, and this lead to concentration of infrastructure and industrial facilities such as companies and factories, which in turn made possible the increase of population, especially the population of Japanese people.

This paper examines the social life of masks in colonial Korea with a focus on their use in hygienic practices. It argues that masks first appeared in the disease control scene in late 1919 when the Governor-General of Korea belatedly introduced preventative measures against the Spanish Influenza pandemic. Since then, the central and regional hygiene authorities had begun to encourage colonial Koreans to wear masks whenever respiratory disease epidemics transpired. Simultaneously, Korean doctors and news reporters framed mask-wearing as something needed for family hygiene, particularly for trans-seasonal child health care, and advised colonial Korean women to manage and wear masks. This paper also reveals that the primary type of masks used in colonial society was black-colored Japanese respirators. Its design was the main point of contention in the debates on the effectiveness of masks against disease infection. Finally, it also highlights that the wide support of using masks by medical doctors and authorities was not based on scientific evidence but on empirical rules they developed through the pandemic and epidemics. The mask-usage practice would be challenged only when South Korean doctors reframed it as a "Japanese custom not grounded on science" at the height of postcolonial nationalism and the raised concern about the artifact's usefulness during the Hong Kong Influenza pandemic of 1968.

The liberation period in Korea was when creative imagination and various debates existed about plans for political, economic, and social systems. Among them was the debate over the national health security underlying the social safety net. Although the US influenced the Korean health security after liberation, major political groups on the Korean peninsula also expressed various opinions. However, previous studies have shown little interest in national health security, which operates the public health and medical care systems. To overcome these limitations, this study focuses on the ideas on national health security presented by major political groups, analyzing the reply proposal of "Jŏnpyŏng" and the health care proposal of the US military government, which has not been reviewed before. The opinions of major political groups including the right-wing Im-hyŏp and left-wing Min-chŏn diverged on national health security issue regarding insurance coverage, measures to secure financial resources, items of insurance benefits, and measures to stabilize the supply and demand of medical personnel. The claims of the US military government can be understood by "Labor Problems and Policies in Korea (Korean Subcommittee)," "Korean Labor Report (Stewart Meacham)," and "Proposed Political Platform Provisional Korean Democratic Government (Sub-commission #2)." The major political groups and the US military government agreed on the need for social protection against death, old age, disability, disease, injury, and unemployment. All of them claimed national health security, in which the roles of the private sector and the government were mixed, should be gradually introduced. The major political groups, in particular, proposed to (1) set workers as beneficiaries of insurance, (2) share financial resources jointly among the state, employers, and workers, and (3) promote the expansion of the number of doctors and medical institutions and prefer cooperative operations of the hospitals established in small administrative units. This paper argues that the ideas on national health security during the liberation period did not completely deviate from the global trend immediately after World War II when countries tried to expand the number of people covered by national health security and strengthen its coverage. Although these ideas were not fully reflected in the Constitution of 1948, it is significant in that the Constitution codified for the first time the state's responsibility for those who have no ability for living due to their health conditions.