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SUMMARY:Contested Drugs: Controversy over Herbal Medicine between Western 
 Pharmacists and Oriental Physicians - EunJeong Ma\, Needham Research Insti
 tute visiting scholar
DTSTART:20061109T170000Z
DTEND:20061109T180000Z
UID:TALK5608@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Su Lin Lewis
DESCRIPTION:This paper is about a historical and ethnographic account of\n
 controversy between practitioners of Western and Oriental medicine (OM) in
  South Korea over the right to prescribe herbal remedies. Since Western me
 dicine (WM) was introduced into Korea\, either through Christian missionar
 ies or through the Japanese colonial agencies in the late nineteenth centu
 ry\, practitioners of both medical systems have periodically clashed over 
 the boundaries of jurisdictional rights. The tension between the two profe
 ssions became intense and conspicuous in the public arena when the Pharmac
 eutical Law governing the traditional type of herbal medicine cabinet at W
 estern pharmacies was repealed in March 1993. The professional organizatio
 ns associated with each of the two medical systems tried either to defend 
 or to enlarge the jurisdictional boundaries of OM or WM\, in order to secu
 re economic profits by controlling the right to prescribe herbal\nmedicine
 s. OM practitioners\, who wanted to preserve\, recover\, and restore their
  traditional medical practices\, identified unique\, peculiar qualities of
  OM practices and substances\, and characterized them in an esoteric way. 
 In contrast\, pharmacists competing for a share of the herbal market attem
 pted to prove that allegedly arcane OM knowledge could be understood in te
 rms of the scientific language in which they wished to validate their\ncla
 ims. OM practitioners emphasized the incommensurability between OM and WM\
 , whereas pharmacists insisted that the principles of OM could be translat
 ed into Western scientific language. Contentions over the commensurability
  of the two systems manifested in terms of conflicting interpretations of 
 herbal medicines and the herbal medicine cabinet. The conflict views were 
 resolved through the creation of new regulatory drugs\,\nOriental pharmace
 uticals (Han Bang Je Je). In the paper\, I focus on the evolving status of
  herbal medicines\, with special attention to emergent regulatory Oriental
  pharmaceuticals.
LOCATION:OCR\, St. Catharine's College
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