신문 상담란 “지상 병원”을 중심으로 본 1930년대 식민지 조선 대중들의 신체 인식과 의학 지식 수용 = The Body Image and Medical Knowledge of the Korean Public in the 1930s through the Medical Advice Column “Jisang byeongwon(Hospital on Paper)”

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study analyzes the medical advice column “Jisang byeongwon(紙上病院, hospital on paper),” which was published in one of the major newspapers in colonial Korea, Dong-A Ilbo, during the 1930s. We aim to capture and demonstrate the body image and medical knowledge of the Korean public. Various advice and consultation columns appeared in newspapers during the 1930s, to communicate with the public and encourage the participation of readers. Among them, the medical advice column “Jisang byeongwon” was popular, because it featured direct counseling with medical professionals.
“Jisang byeongwon” appeared 1,597 times including advice for a total of 3,888 cases. A wide variety of people submitted their medical problems. In terms of sex, male(2,142) appeared two times as much as female(988). The age of the contributors were mostly from the late teens to thirties, though a 20 day-old baby and 80 year-old women also participated. The most frequent medical problems were “neurasthenia”(180) and “gonorrhea”(115). The rest were parasitic disease, syphilis, hemorrhoids, acne, rhinitis, hair loss, otitis media, urine problem, and leucorrhea.
“Jisang byeongwon” was a sort of public arena, which revealed the acceptance, transmission, and interaction of medical knowledge. The readers publicly questioned the popular beliefs of disease, body and remedies, and were reassured by the medical knowledge disbursed by the physicians. Meanwhile, the editors announced the submission rule, which included the appropriate style of questioning and description of symptoms. It trained the readers as “modern patients.” The column also provided opportunities to take home-made Western-style remedies. Moreover, the medical knowledge was not only transferred from medical professionals to patients, but was also translated from the patients to medical professionals through counseling. It shows that although Western medicine was promoted as modern knowledge during the colonial period, it involved a repetitive and insecure process of the acceptance, interpretion, and reinterpretion.