조선후기 통신사 수행 醫員에 대하여

Abstract

Tongsinsahaeng was a large scale diplomatic delegation which Joseon kings sent to Japanese kings, which consisted of 300-500. This paper is on the medical doctors and their duties during the delegation period. They followed the delegations to take care of the government officials’ health. Joseon kings dispatched diplomatic delegations twelve times to Japan, and thirty doctors followed them. The kings dispatched 2 doctors until the fourth time, but they did 3 from 1655. From 1682, one of the three doctors was a western medical doctor. The average age of them was 37.6 years old. As Japan asked the Joseon government to send more aged doctors, they were just 10 years younger than the interpreters. As for the families, just four doctors were from the best 20 families who produced excellent doctors who passed the national examination of medical practitioners. Thus, it is not proper to say that the doctors sent to Japan were better in medicine than those to China. This was because they had no right to trade personally while doctors sent to China did. Contrary to the interpreters who could make money, doctors could gain no profits like new medical techniques from Japan, so no excellent doctors wanted to follow the delegation. The doctors of the delegation was to take care of the officials’ health. They brought 55 sorts of medicinal stuff officially, but it seems that they had other medicines as well since there were records of various others. Most of the medicines they carried personally were for the common diseases they could get during the long journey such as, a muscular ache, diarrhea, vomit, fever, exhaustion, bronchitis, tetanus, and so on. Besides taking care of the officials’ health, they treated Japanese patients, wrote prescriptions, and even had discussions with Japanese doctors, all of which weren’t included in their official itinerary. Actually, the medical discussions between them were closely related with the policy of a Japanese Shogun Tokugawa Yosimune who wanted to gather information about the medicinal stuff of Joseon and the possibility of growing Joseon ginseng in Japan. That’s why the questions of how to find a substitutable herb for ginseng and how to grow ginseng were concentrated in 1719, 1748, and 1764.