In The Logic of Life (1970), Francois Jacob (1920~ ), Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology or Medicine (1965), proclaimed the end of vitalism based on the concept of life. More than two decades before this capital sentence condemning vitalism was pronounced, Georges Canguilhem (1904~1995), a French philosopher of medicine, already acknowledged that eighteenth-century vitalism was scientifically retrograde and politically reactionary or counter-revolutionary insofar as it was rooted in the animism of Georg Ernst Stahl (1660~1734). The negative preconception of the term 'vitalism' came to be established as an orthodox view, since Claude Bernard (1813~1878) unfairly criticized contemporary vitalism in order to propagate his idea of experimental medicine. An eminent evolutionary biologist like Ernst Mayr (1904~2005) still defended similar views in This is Biology (1997), arguing that if vitalists were decisive and convincing in their rejection of the Cartesian model (negative heuristics), however they were equally indecisive and unconvincing in their own explanatory endeavors (positive heuristics). Historically speaking, vitalists came to the forefront for their outstanding criticism of Cartesian mechanism and physicochemical reductionism, while their innovative concepts and theories were underestimated and received much less attention. Is it true that vitalism was merely a pseudo-science, representing a kind of romanticism or mysticism in biomedical science? Did vitalists lack any positive heuristics in their biomedical research? Above all, what was actually the so.called 'vitalism'? This paper aims to reveal the positive heuristics of vitalism defined by Paul.Joseph Barthez (1734~1806) who was the founder of the vitalist school of Montpellier. To this end, his work and idea are introduced with regard to the vying doctrines in physiology and medicine. At the moment when he taught at the medical school of Montpellier, his colleagues advocated the mechanism of Rene Descartes (1596~1650), the iatromechanism of Herman Boerhaave (1668~1738), the iatrochemistry of Jan Baptist van Helmont (1579~1644), the animism of Stahl, and the organicism of Theophile de Bordeu (1722~1776). On the contrary, Barthez devoted himself to synthesize diverse doctrines and his vitalism consequently illustrated an eclectic character. Always taking a skeptical standpoint regarding the capacity of biomedical science, he defined his famous concept of 'vital principle (principe vital)' as the 'x (unknown variable)' of physiology. He argued that the hypothetical concept of vital principle referred to the 'experimental cause (cause experimentale)' verifiable by positive science. Thus, the vital principle was not presupposed as an a priori regulative principle. It was an a posteriori heuristic principle resulting from several experiments. The 'positivist hypothetism' of Barthez demonstrates not only pragmatism but also positivism in his scientific terminology. Furthermore, Barthez established a guideline for clinical practice according to his own methodological principles. It can be characterized as a 'humanist pragmatism' for the reason that all sort of treatments were permitted as far as they were beneficial to the patient. Theoretical incoherence or incommensurability among different treatments did not matter to Barthez. His practical strategy for clinical medicine consisted of three principles: namely, the natural, analytic, and empirical method. This formulation is indebted to the 'analytic method (methode analytique)' of the French empiricist philosopher Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714~1780). In conclusion, the eighteenth.century French vitalism conceived by Barthez pursued pragmatism in general, positivism in methodology, and humanism in clinics.
Biology/history ; Evolution ; History, 18th Century ; History, 19th Century ; History, 20th Century ; Humans ; Male ; Nobel Prize ; Philosophy/history ; Vitalism/*history

Through the whole history of medicine, there runs a long struggle between two principal tendencies-empiricism and rationalism. The empirical trend lays its emphasis on "experience" for the cure of the sick. The rationalistic trend lays its main emphasis on "mechanism" for the causes of diseases. The term "evidence-based medicine (EBM) ", defined as "the conscious, explicit and judicious use of the best current evidence in making decisions about the individual patients", was introduced about ten years ago. The proponents has been described EBM as a "paradigm shift" that will change medical practice in the years ahead. But there has been considerable debate about the value of EBM. The modern medicine, following philosophy of modern science such as the 'realism controlled by empiricism', has developed biomedical model. But the EBM wrapped with clinical epidemiology and statistics, represents response of empiricism to the rationalism (realism). The roots of EBM extend back at least as far as the Paris clinical school, and the work of Pierre Louis in Paris in the early 19th century. Is EBM a paradigm shift? To answer this question, We have to specify the alternative with which we are comparing EBM. The alternative to EBM is the basic science approach: studying the pathophysiolological mechanism of the body. But EBM is so clearly intertwined with and complementary to the basic science that it would make little sense to see EBM as a paradigm shift away from basic science. In a sense, evidence-based medicine shows only methodological contribution aimed at improving the gathering and sorting of the best information published by biomedical scientists and clinical epidemiologists for use in clinical practice. Although EBM and the traditional medicine embody different approaches, this does not mean that they are competitors. In fact, the two approach need each; neither can stand alone for the development of clinical practice.
English Abstract ; Evidence-Based Medicine/*history ; History, 19th Century ; History, 20th Century ; History, 21st Century ; Philosophy, Medical/*history

This article surveys studies focusing on pre-modern Korean medicine, which are both written in English and analyzed primary sources up to 1876. Overall, the history of pre-modern Korean medicine is an unknown filed in Anglophone academia. Yung Sik Kim's, James Palais's, and Carter Ecart's problematization of the nationalist framework of Korean scholarship partially explains the marginality of the field. Addressing these criticisms, this review argues that pre-modern Korean medicine's uneasy task lies in both elaborating Korea's own experience of medicine, while simultaneously avoiding making the "Korean" category itself essential. Korean narratives of premodern medicine need to go beyond the mere territorilalization of Korean medicine against its Chinese, Japanese, or Western counterparts, thereby to tackle the field's own boundary of research objects. The existing scholarship in English responds to this challenge by primarily examining the way in which Korea has shared textual tradition with China. Sirhak scholars' innovation in medicine, visual representation of Tongui bogam, Korean management of epidemics in the eleventh century, and Korean indexing of local botanicals, engages not only native achievements, but also the process of modifying medicine across geographical and political boundaries. More to the point, the emerging native narratives, although written in Korean, are implicitly resonant with those currently present in Anglophone academia. Taking "tension," "intertextuality," and "local traits" as a lens, this article assesses a series of current research in Korea. Aiming to go beyond appeals for a "distinctively" Korean experience of medicine, the future study of Korean pre-modern medicine will further elucidate confluences of different flows, such as "Chinese and Korean," "universal and local," "center and periphery," and "native and foreign," which will eventually articulate a range of Korean techniques of creating a bricolage in medicine.
History, 15th Century ; History, 16th Century ; History, 17th Century ; History, 18th Century ; History, 19th Century ; History, Medieval ; Medicine, Korean Traditional/*history ; Republic of Korea

Western medicine began to be introduced to Japan since late 16th century. Japanese encounter with Western medicine centered on Dejima in Nagasaki in the seventeenth and eighteenth century and the initial process of introduction was gradual and slow. In the mid-nineteenth century, facing threats from Western countries, Tokugawa bakufu asked Dutch naval surgeon, J. L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort to teach western medicine at the Kaigun Denshujo naval academy in Nagasaki. The government also supported the western medical school in Edo. This paper deals with how modern western medical doctors were developed in Japan from late Edo to early Meiji. The publication of the New Text on Anatomy in 1774 translated by Sugita Genpaku and his colleagues stimulated Japanese doctors and scholars to study western medicine, called Rangaku. During the Edo period, western medicine spread into major cities and countryside in Japan through Rangaku doctors. In 1838, for example, Dr. Ogata Koan established the Rangaku school named Tekijuku and educated many people with western medicine. When smallpox vaccination was introduced in Japan in 1849, Rangaku doctors played an important role in practiving the vaccination in cities and in countryside. After the Edo bakufu and the feudal lords of han(han) actively pursued to introduce western medicine to their hans by sending their Samurai to Edo or Nagasaki or abroad and by establishing medical schools and hospitals until their abolition in 1871. In late Edo and early Meiii military doctors were the main focus of training to meet the urgent need of military doctors in the battle fields of civil wars. The new Meiji government initiated a series of top-down reformations concerning army recruitment, national school system, public health and medical system. In 1874, the government introduced a law on medicine to adopt western medicine only and to launch a national licence system for medical doctors. Issuing supplementary regulations in the following years, the Meiji government settled down a dual-track medical licensing system: one for the graduates from medical schools with certain quality and the other for the graduate from less qualified schools who should take the licensing examination.
Books/history ; Education, Medical/history ; History, 16th Century ; History, 17th Century ; History, 18th Century ; History, 19th Century ; Humans ; Japan ; Physicians/*history ; Schools, Medical/*history

The body has been an intense focus of attention since the 1990s both in academic and mundane discourse. In philosophy, literature critique, sociology and anthropology the body has been found to have various implications and auras around it. I try to explain the body as the subject of medicine rather philosophically, in terms of nature, culture and phenomena. And then I look into the Korean body of the late 19th century when western biomedicine was first introduced. The Korean body was encountering traditional and modern biomedical medicines in three different spaces i.e., corporal, social and moral. The corporal space was the space into which direct intervention such as surgery was performed. The body was also situated in the social space where imperative social measures such as sanitation and sterilization was imposed. The body also had the moral space, invasion into which evoked great moral upheaval. It was when the government ordered the public to cut the long and bound hair, which had long been the symbol of their identity. Reflecting upon the philosophical perspectives and examining concrete cases of the encounters of the body with the two medical systems, I argue that we should have new perspective that embodies the historical and phenomenological experience of the body.
English Abstract ; History, 19th Century ; History, 20th Century ; History, 21st Century ; *Human Body ; Korea ; Medicine, Oriental Traditional/*history ; Philosophy, Medical/*history ; Western World/*history

This study aims to address questions regarding the translation of 'gout' into 'tongfeng' in East Asia. To this end, the formation process of the origins, 'gout' from Western medicine and 'tongfeng' from Oriental medicine, and the translational process were investigated through the relevant records and literature dating from the 16th century on. Symptoms associated with gout were originally mentioned in ancient Egypt and various terminologies were used to refer to gout, such as podagra, cheiragra and gonogra. The word 'gout', which is derived from Latin, was used for the first time in the 13th century. The reason for this linguistic alteration is thought to be the need for a comprehensive term to cover the various terms for gout in symptomatic body parts, since it can occur concurrently in many joints. However, it took hundreds of years before gout was independently established as a medical term. In oriental medicine, terms describing diseases with features similar to gout include bibing, lijiefeng, baihufeng and tongfeng. Among them, the concept of 'tongfeng' has been established since the Jin and Yuan dynasties. The cause, prevention and various treatments for tongfeng were proposed throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties. The early translation of gout and tongfeng in East Asia, respectively, is estimated to have occurred in the 18th century. The first literature translating gout in China was 'An English and Chinese Vocabulary in the Court Dialect (yinghua yunfu lijie)'. From the publication of this book until the late 19th century, gout was translated into an unfamiliar Chinese character 'Jiu feng jiao', likely because the translation was done mostly by foreign missionaries at the time, and they created a new word on the basis of Western medicine instead of researching and translating similar diseases in oriental medicine. In Japan, the first book translating gout was 'A Pocket Dictionary of the English and Japanese Language (Eiwa taiyaku shuchin jisho)', Japan's the first English-Japanese translation dictionary. In this book, gout was translated into tongfeng, a word adopted from oriental medicine. These differences from China are thought to be caused by Rangaku doctors, who, influenced by oriental medicine in the Jin and Yuan dynasties, played an important role in translating medical terminology at that time.
China ; Gout/*history ; History, 15th Century ; History, 16th Century ; History, 17th Century ; History, 18th Century ; History, 19th Century ; History, Ancient ; History, Medieval ; Japan ; Medicine, East Asian Traditional/*history ; *Terminology as Topic ; Translating

Recently, new methods have been developed for estimating the current and recent changes in effective population sizes. Based on the methods, the effective population sizes of Korean populations were estimated using data from the Korean Association Resource (KARE) project. The overall changes in the population sizes of the total populations were similar to CHB (Han Chinese in Beijing, China) and JPT (Japanese in Tokyo, Japan) of the HapMap project. There were no differences in past changes in population sizes with a comparison between an urban area and a rural area. Age-dependent current and recent effective population sizes represent the modern history of Korean populations, including the effects of World War II, the Korean War, and urbanization. The oldest age group showed that the population growth of Koreans had already been substantial at least since the end of the 19th century.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; HapMap Project ; History, Modern 1601- ; Humans ; Korean War ; Linkage Disequilibrium ; Population Density* ; Population Growth ; Rural Population ; Urban Population ; Urbanization ; World War II

As the sciences advanced rapidly in the modern European world, outstanding achievements have been made in medicine, chemistry, biology, physiology, physics and others, which have been co-influencing each of the scientific disciplines. Accordingly, such medical and scientific phenomena began to be reflected in novels. In particular, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein includes the diverse aspects of the change and development in the medicine and science. Associated with medical and scientific information reflected in Frankenstein and Frankenstein's experiments in the text, accordingly, this research will investigate the aspects of medical and scientific development taking place in the nineteenth century in three ways. First, the medical and scientific development of the nineteenth century has been reviewed by summerizing both the information of alchemy in which Frankenstein shows his interest and the new science in general that M. Waldman introduces in the text. Second, the actual features of medical and scientific development have been examined through some examples of the experimental methods that M. Waldman implicitly uttered to Frankenstein. Third, it has been checked how the medical and scientific development is related to the main issues of mechanism and vitalism which can be explained as principles of life. Even though this research deals with the developmental process of medicine & science and origin & principles of life implied in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, its significance is that it is the interdisciplinary research focussing on how deeply medical and scientific discourse of Mary Shelley's period has been imbedded in the nineteenth century novel.
Biomedical Research/*history ; History, 19th Century ; Literature, Modern/*history ; *Medicine in Literature

Medical doctors in the Chosun Dynasty read Chinese literature of high level in order to take the medical civil service examination, but there are not many extant writings of theirs except some medical books. Middle class people's selections of poems such as Haedongyuju, Sodaepungyo, Pungyosokseon and Pungyosamseon were published, and among the list of the writers, those who were identified as medical doctors were Park Gun, Baek Heung jeon, Shin Myeong hee, Shin Hee myeong, Oh Chang ryeol, Yoo Dong yeok, etc. Even their works are not many, and this suggests that doctors' writing was not active except for medical books. Lee Hyeon yang (1783 1852), the author of Gokcheongsago, was born the only son of Lee Jaewoo (1750 1808), an acupuncturist at the Lee family from Ansan, which was an influential middleclass family. His pen name was changed from Gokcheong to Anrakwa, Yongheon and Gyeongsudang, and for each pen name, he wrote a foreword explaining the origin of the name and his resolution. The Lee family from Ansan produced 20 medical officials through eight generations from Lee Yoon yeong in the 7th generation to Lee Myeong ryun in the 15th generation. He learned medicine, his family occupation, diligently and passed the medical civil service examination in 1803 when he was 21. In addition, he studied Confucian scriptures enthusiastically and left many writing along with medical books. Based on the forewords in his anthology Gokcheongsago, there are eight writings of his as follows in chronological order: Suseongpyeongam(1798), Cheongimiyo(1799), Euihakjeongwon(1801), Gwangjebiyo(five volumes, 1810), Wonbyeonggiyo (1819), Bonchojeongeui(1826), Euiyakcheongji(1838), and Yeonghwaji (1843). He wrote not only medical books but also traditional Chinese texts in different styles. In the 180pages transcription, he as a medical doctor showed various writing styles based on Confucianism including 22 prologues and epilogues, 9 diaries, discussions and opinions, 2 biographies, 5 letters, 10 memorial addresses and condolence messages, and 8 miscellaneous writings. His writing attitude was different among the periods when preparing for the medical civil service examination, when acting as a medical doctor, and when working as a magistrate, and it shows medical doctors' life in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Acupuncture/history ; History, 18th Century ; History, 19th Century ; Korea ; Literature, Modern/*history ; Public Sector/history

Sakae Miki said Classified Emergency Materia Medica had been the dominant standard of herbology throughout Joseon Dynasty, and that Compendium of Materia Medica had only been accepted so lately that a few books used herbological result of it in the late Joseon Dynasty. But according to Visiting Old Beijing Diary written by Munjoong Seo in 1690, Compendium of Materia Medica was in fact introduced before the year 1712, the year Miki Sakae argued to be the year Compendium of Materia Medica was accepted to Joseon officially. Now, we can assume that the introducing year of Compendium of Materia Medica was faster than Miki Sakae's opinion by the following reasons; the effort of Joseon government and intellectuals to buy new books of Ming & Ching; the publishing year of the book for living in countryside regarded as the first citing literature of Compendium of Materia Medica. And the True Records of the Joseon Dynasty and many collections written by intellectuals in the 18th century show that the herbological knowledge from Compendium of Materia Medica had already spread to the corners of Joseon Dynasty. Thus we can make the following assumption: Classified Emergency Materia Medica and Compendium of Materia Medica had coexisted in the late Joseon Dynasty. Sakae Miki suggested 6 examples which used Compendium of Materia Medica in the late Joseon Dynasty. I reviewed two of them in this paper, Essentials of Materia Medica & Handbook of Prescriptions from Materia Medica. Essentials of Materia Medica quoted Compendium of Materia Medica briefly focusing clinical use, and Handbook of Prescriptions from Materia Medica also re-compiled Compendium of Materia Medica to practical use according to the form of Treasured Mirror of Eastern Medicine. It means that the results of Compendium of Materia Medica have been used positively, based on the herbology of materia medica from countryside. From this point of view, the hyphothesis there weren't any herbological progress after accepting Compendium of Materia Medica in the late Joseon Dynasty by Sakae Miki can be denied.
History, 18th Century ; History, 19th Century ; Humans ; Materia Medica/*history ; Plants, Medicinal ; Publishing/*history