The History of Surgical Anesthesia in Korea ( 1910 ~ 1945 )

Abstract

The Oriental countries have had long histories and large populations. While they were the civilized country with the profound culture and thoughts, they were backward in material civilization bacause of their delayed development of science. Extending from the end of the 18th century to the 19th century the Western countries perturbed the Eastern countries with their sudden appearance. The Western countries visited the East with their threatening attitudes by giant war vessels and guns. They also strongly demanded to import their advanced daily commodities and the studies including the medical science. Since the most of the Eastern countries were too conservative, they resisted and rejected the Western forces at first. At that time, most Eastern countries located in the southern region of Asian continent were colonized by the West. The other countries in the nortern region came to realize that they were behind the West in material civilization, so had to open their door to the West through the foreign contact. China, Japan and Korea had to accept the Western culture and urged the civilization. Especially Japan adapted herself to new circumstances before others. She accepted the Western culture, thoughts and all studies actively with even reforming her political system. Starting from the yesr of 1868, Japan not only was reborn and formed independent position in the cultural region of China and Korea but also succeeded to construct the first westernized country among the Eastern countries and weekened the influence of China and Russia. Japan provoked and won wars such as the Sino-Japanese War {1894} and the Russia-Japanese War (1904). Follwing up these victories, Japan also occupied Korea in 1910, and the period of colonization had continued for 35 years until 1945 when Japan surrendered to the Allies at the end of the World War II. With these historical cirumstances, the purpose of this research paper is to collect the medical data, especially that of the anesthesia, and show its historical contributions through the documents. The long history of Korea had developed with the traditional and peculiar medical science, such as a herb medical science and a medical science in acupuncture and moxibustion. Korean medical science, however, has been greatly changed since 1876, the year of opening her door to Japan. There were two ways of introducing the Western medical science in Korea. As the indirect import, the japanese Western medical scince through the city of Busan was one. As the direct imports, the American medical science by an American missionary, Allen through the city of Incheon was the other. In these two currents of the Western medical science, it was natural that the Japanese one formed the main stream after 1910, the year of japanese occupation. The field of anestheia science was not an exception. Its developing process was no better than following the path of Japanese anesthesia science history. Comparing the Western developing history of anesthesia to that of Japan in general, there were a few years difference in the level of quality between the East and the West until about 1930. Japanese anesthesia, however, fell behind over 20 years, comparing to the Western one, in the period from the late of 1930s to 1945. I believe that it is beyond the scope of this paper to explain and it leaves us with meaningful lessons.