Donguibogamgwa Dongasia Euihaksa 동의보감과 동아시아 의학사 [Treasured Mirror of Eastern Medicine and the History of East Asian Medicine] by Shin Dongwon (review)

The Treasured Mirror of Eastern Medicine (東醫寶鑑, 1613), also known as the Donguibogam, written by Heo Jun (許浚, 1539–1615) of the Joseon Dynasty (朝鮮, 1392–1910) of Korea, is one of the best-known medical textbooks in the history of Korean medicine. It has been very popular, in academic terms as well, throughout East Asian countries, and it is also the first medical textbook to have been included in the Memory of the World Register by UNESCO. This literature has been an interesting subject of study for medical historians because Heo Jun employed the term Eastern medicine (Dongui, 東醫) and because this term is intertwined with various theses, such as spatiotemporal aspects of knowledge, universality versus specificity, centrality versus peripherality, self-awareness of local agents, and the shaping of tradition. What, then, could be said about the characteristics and historical implications of this book? An answer to this question is provided in Shin Dongwon’s Treasured Mirror of Eastern Medicine and the History of East Asian Medicine (2015). A leading senior scholar in the history of Korean science, Shin has examined the Treasured Mirror for more than two decades. Shin’s book, an expanded version of his previous book, Heo Jun of Joseon (2001), is the culmination of his many years of research.

As the change in the title of the book—from “Heo Jun of Joseon” to “History of East Asian Medicine”—implies, Shin attempts to examine the traits of the Treasured Mirror within a larger context of East Asia, rather than understanding Heo Jun and his work as something limited to being Korean. Shin’s motivation for writing this book was that the Treasured Mirror had been published around six times during the Joseon Dynasty, more than thirty times in China (including nineteen times during the Ch’ing Dynasty and the Republic Period), and twice in Japan before the nineteenth century, and also had been cited in Vietnamese medical literature of the nineteenth century. In other words, the Treasured Mirror was not a piece that was appreciated solely by Koreans. Shin argues that the text had been able to gain such a wide readership because it displayed certain “East Asian features,” and he aims to unveil the book’s characteristics and values that international as well as Korean readers can appreciate. The book is divided into three parts, each addressing one of the following questions (presented in the reverse order): In what manners and to what extent was the Treasured Mirror popularized in the East Asian regions? What are the internal structure and originality of the book in its content? What were the sociocultural contexts and capacities that had enabled the birth of the book?

In narrating the background and processes that led to the birth of the Treasured Mirror, part 1 emphasizes that the completion of the volumes was not simply a personal accomplishment; rather, it was an achievement that ensued from the matured intellectual and cultural capacity of the early Joseon Dynasty (fifteenth to sixteenth centuries). The Treasured Mirror was a national academic project commissioned by the Joseon government and was completed at the turn of the seventeenth century, when it was at war with invading Japanese forces. Shin observes that the book emphasizes the “life nourishment” and the body, rather than the disease per se, and that it aims at something higher than simply accepting advanced civilization. Such features and objectives were, Shin argues, attributable to the medical and intellectual capacity that had been accumulated since the beginning of the Joseon Dynasty and to the spread of the life-nourishment culture among the literati and intellectuals during the early Joseon period.

Shin pays attention not only to Heo Jun, the de facto author of the text, but also to Heo Jun’s coworkers and King Seonjo (宣祖, r. 1567–1608), the initiator of this project. Contrary to the conventional heroic tale of Heo Jun himself, Shin highlights his familial...