GGHS 이호○
My Essay
Topic : History of Goryeo Medicine
Actually I love to talk with foreigners so I even joined the English club with Rusty teacher during last semester. And I thought it would be a great opportunity not only to research and learn about the topic which is related to my future dream and major but also to raise my English conversation skills. So I participated this summer camp. Actually, attending school on vacation was not good idea that much. Because this summer vacation is surprisingly short. However, because it means learning something, I wanted to participate in the camp even while attending school during vacation. My future dream is to be a nurse so I must acquire lots of medical knowledge. And I’m interested in medicine, especially I’m interested in oriental and western medications. The medical science of Joseon is well known, but the medical science of Goryeo is not so I wondered about medicine of Goryeo. I thought if I chose this topic, I could learn lots of medical knowledge in Goryeo. So I chose the topic ‘History of Goryeo Medicine, the diseases and their treatment’.
I am the member of health club ‘Healing’ in school and our school had an academic seminar just last week. Our club had to make something to display so we investigated about the infectious disease and home remedy of Goryeo. We chose them to be the subject of academic seminar because we needed a topic that caught people's attention. I was quite surprised because the content of home remedies was unreasonable. They contain the content like when you have an eye infection, wash your eyes with a child's urine or with water from your teeth or salt water and when you have a toothache, a latrine can be cured by attaching a living maggots eye to your sick teeth. We laughed a lot while preparing for the presentation because of home remedies.
Unlike I did the club, this time we studied about the official history of medicine and medical books of Goryeo. It was more professional activity than what I did in our club. I learned that Goryeo’s royal court had engaged in charitable medical activities through the state institutions and Goryeo people had the knowledge about Indian and Arabian medicine. It was also possible to find out what herbal medicines the people of Goryeo used. Actually at first, I misunderstood the words ‘향약’ and ‘당재’. I thought that ‘당재’ is the name of a certain herb. But I found ‘당재’ means the medicinal herbs produced in China, and ‘향약’ means the medicinal herbs produced in Korea. And I learned about some kinds of medical herbs, among them I found a medicine that looked interesting. It looks like a rock crystal, its name is Dryobalanops aromatica Gaertner and it is effective for high fever, adult and pediatric convulsion and is used for various inflammation such as sore throat, stomatitis, itching, congestion and inflammation of the ear. In fact, I didn't believe in the efficiency of Chinese medicine because the effects of Chinese medicine rarely show straight as those of Western medicine, and there are side effects such as gaining weight. However, through the research conducted at this summer camp, I realized that oriental medicine has existed for a very long time, and although it is rare to see its effects immediately, if patients take a dose in the long term, it can change their constitution.
We divided our team into small groups. And the small groups did research together. Our group researched about formation and change of Goryeo medicine. We divided what we researched into the beginning, the middle and the last periods according to the time sequence and we translated them. My job was translating the middle part of Goryeo dynasty. I had a hard time translating 초조대장경 (the first edition of Tripitaka Koreana) in English. And the translator translated the text strangely so I had to correct the translated text more than twice. It was a little bit difficult to translate but I thought it would help to improve my writing skills. I also translated script for our presentation with my team members. This is much easier than translating report because we already have translated text.
My goal of this camp was to gain lots of information about the medicine of Goryeo, preparing presentation and writing our report well. I think I achieved my three goals! Now we’re preparing for tomorrow’s presentation. We will have a presentation and do a play. I look forward to having a successful team presentation tomorrow. The camp was a good experience for my future. I had an opportunity to do the group work with our school seniors, friends and foreigner teacher. The teacher was so kind and so were the seniors and friends. Through this summer camp I learned not only about the medicine of Goryeo but also how to cooperate. And this summer camp is more special than any other camp because we took a lecture from professor Kim Hyeon, we had the opportunity to post our research on Wikimedia, and it was the camp to celebrate the 1,100 anniversary of the founding of Goryeo. It was such a meaningful experience and I want to participate in winter camp, too.
