Naming the Local: Medicine, Language, and Identity in Korea since the 15th Century

Naming the Local uncovers how Koreans domesticated foreign medical novelties on their own terms, while simultaneously modifying the Korea-specific expressions of illness and wellness to make them accessible to the wider network of scholars and audiences. Due to KoreaÕs geopolitical position and the intrinsic tension of medicineÕs efforts to balance the local and the universal, Soyung Suh argues that KoreansÕ attempts to officially document indigenous categories in a particular linguistic form required constant negotiation of their own conceptual boundaries against the Chinese, Japanese, and American authorities that had largely shaped the medical knowledge grid. The birth, decline, and afterlife of five terminologiesÑmateria medica, the geography of the medical tradition, the body, medical commodities, and illnessÑilluminate an irresolvable dualism at the heart of the Korean endeavor to name the indigenous attributes of medicine. By tracing Korean-educated agentsÕ efforts to articulate the vernacular nomenclature of medicine over time, this book examines the limitations and possibilities of creating a mode of ÒKoreannessÓ in medicineÑand the Korean manifestation of cultural and national identities.