The Dissemination and Practice of Primary Care Medicine by the Scholar-Gentry: A Study of Prescriptions of Local Botanicals for Emergency Use, a Medical Text of Koryŏ from the Thirteenth-Fourteenth Centuries

Prescriptions of Local Botanicals for Emergency Use (K. Hyang’yak Kugŭppang 鄕藥救急方) is the oldest medical text extant on the Korean Peninsula and known to have been compiled during the latter half of the Koryŏ 高麗 dynasty (918–1392 ce). The key value of this work lies in the dissemination and praxis of medical knowledge. First, the author used annotations in order to record Koryŏ people’s pronunciations of the names of medicinal ingredients and symptoms introduced in the main body of the text. In addition, he made use of actual empirical cases to enhance the persuasiveness of treatment methods and integrated medicine newly introduced from Song 宋 China (960–1279) into medicine familiarly used from before. Finally, he edited this text with a focus on important and simple yet efficacious treatment methods. The book continued to be used steadily following publication. It was additionally printed no fewer than twice by the government of the Chosŏn 朝鮮 dynasty (1392–1910), which ousted Koryŏ, with its clinical usefulness heightened through the supplementation of explanations on medicinal ingredients use in these processes. In particular, the quotation of sentences from Prescriptions for Emergency Use in medical texts published by the Chosŏn government implies that the utility of the medical knowledge in this work was amply acknowledged. The intended readership of the medical information in Prescriptions for Emergency Use was the not the general populace who lived in the Korean Peninsula in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. They not only lacked the financial means to pay physicians but also were illiterate, so that they could not even read medical texts. In order for this work to be effective, it was necessary for it to address those who could read medical texts and put their contents into practice. In the end, the author of this book assumed scholar-gentry equipped with academic knowledge as its readers and sought to provide medical information tailored to their level and to realize medical service through them. Through this work, it is possible to see in a very concrete and vivid manner how medical knowledge was disseminated and, furthermore, how medical knowledge thus disseminated was put to use in an era when medical resources were insufficient.