A Study on the Shin Man's Life and Idea of Medicine in Juchonsinbang

Kim, Do Hoon

Abstract

For the purpose of understanding the feature of medicine in the late Chosun Dynasty, I investigated Shin Man(1620-1669)'s life and his idea of medicine in Juchonsinbang. Shin Man was a scholar who lived in the middle of the Chosun dynasty. He was famous for his resistance against Ching dynasty in Byeongjahoran, and for his chivalrous spirit. He was daring, inflexible and unrestricted by nature. And his character was reflected in his medical ideas. He studied along Song Si-yeol and started his official career together. Both worked for King Hyojong who strongly wanted to send an expedition to conquer the North. But after the sudden death of King Hyojong, the project to conquer the North had went for nothing. And Shin Man went back to the rural life in Juchon, Jinjam. On the one hand, he lived the life of pursuit of learning Seong Confucianism in Juchon, and on the other hand, he wrote the original form of Juchonsinbang. Shin Man wanted to establish and spread the universal and popularized medicine. So he set a goal to publish a simple and plain prescription book, which corresponds to his idea of medicine which deals with curing people. The currently remaining editions of Juchonsinbang are 3 types. One is the lead printed edition. The others are the dissimilar 2 transcribed editions. There are considerable differences between the lead printed edition and the transcribed editions. The lead printed edition focused on the human being, and divided the category of human being as 3 parts, which are infant, womenkind and adult. Whereas the transcribed editions focused on disorders and aimed at universalization and simplification of medicine. Thus the main viewpoint of medicine changed from disorders to human being. By the way, there are many occult prescriptions in Juchonsinbang. And they aren't distorted with the standpoint of those days. While the time of writing Juchonsinbang has many questionable problems. And there is no historical material which shows the exact time of writing.