Doctors of empire Kim, Hoi-eun
Doctors of empire,
2014, 20140723, 2014, 2015-03-18
eBook
In Doctors of Empire, Hoi-eun Kim recounts the story of the almost 1,200 Japanese medical students who rushed to German universities to learn cutting-edge knowledge from the world leaders in ...medicine, and of the dozen German physicians who were invited to Japan to transform the country's medical institutions and education.
In studying the patent medicine industry in colonial Korea (1910–1945), I pay attention to the inordinately large number of peddlers and small retailers—45,688 in 1935—who functioned as human ...intermediaries in the burgeoning medicinal market. By almost exclusively studying printed advertisements, previous scholars have depicted the patent medicine industry as the vanguard of modern marketing or as a willing partner in the commercial propagation of the hegemonic vision of the colonial biopower. Conscious of the severely limited reach of modern media in the colonial context, I argue instead that incentivized sales intermediaries were equally significant in the success of the patent medicine industry. But the significance and contributions of the peddlers to the patent medicine industry were double-edged—the peddlers helped the industry by facilitating physical dissemination of patent medicine to end consumers, but their constant use of deception and fraud tainted the reputation of the industry. The anticipated move toward stricter regulation, however, did not happen due to two interrelated factors—a nascent group of pharmacists trained in modern pharmacology had strong ties to the patent medicine industry and the lukewarm response from the colonial government put the brakes on any meaningful reform. Overall, by bringing to the fore the pivotal roles peddlers played, my article provides a more nuanced discussion of the marketing practices of the patent medicine industry, the nature of the emerging professional class of pharmacists, and the efficacy (or lack thereof) of the regulatory power of the colonial government.
Abstract
In 1901 the Korean imperial court invited Greifswald-educated medical doctor Richard Wunsch to be personal physician to Emperor Kojong, only to abandon him upon his arrival in Seoul. ...Previous scholarship has understood Wunsch’s wasteful four-year engagement as a typical example from an incompetent regime on the cusp of its forceful transformation into Japan’s protectorate in 1905. Based upon careful analysis of hitherto unexplored diplomatic documents from both German and Korean sides, I argue that the appointment of Wunsch needs be understood in the whirlwind of diplomatic tension between Germany and Korea that arose over the issue of a disputed mining concession in 1898. The mutually agreed arrangement to install a German doctor in the Korean court in 1901 was a symbol of the patched-up relationship, with each side harbouring a different agenda—the German government wanted to put a powerful person in the court to gain an edge in imperial politics in Korea, and Koreans wished to have a German doctor who would function as a counterweight to the more dominant presence of American and British doctors in the court. By reconstructing the impact of convoluted factors, both local and global, in the invitation of a German doctor to Korea, this article provides a detailed case study of the use of medical science by the German imperial government as a chip in the global game of influence. It also functions as an overdue corrective to a commercially inspired and prevalent image of Wunsch that has capitalized upon a self-orientalizing tendency in contemporary Korea.
What are the roles of colonial physical anthropology in postcolonial societies? Does it simply disappear from the public scene, losing its academic and political utility of providing seemingly ...scientific justification for colonial racism? Or does it have a renewed life, serving another master in the name of science? The analysis of the postcolonial intellectual trajectories of Na Sejin (also known as Ilchae and Nishiki Seishin), Korea's foremost anatomist and physical anthropologist, points to an unsavory continuity. Under the new political demands of the postcolonial nation-state, Na, who consciously or unconsciously collaborated with the colonial regime in justifying colonial racial essentialization, did not find it problematic to use body measurements collected and analyzed by his Japanese teachers and colleagues during the Colonial Period to identify the racial characteristics of Koreans. Rather, in postcolonial Korea, which reasserted ethnic uniformity as the constructive lynchpin of the post-Liberation nation-state, Na retooled his skills and reauthenticated the category of "race" to support a discourse of a homogeneous ethnic Korean society using measurable (and therefore seemingly irrefutable) scientific evidence. Recognizing this continuity of physical anthropology through the colonial and postcolonial periods is to discover the long-term legacy of knowledge that originated from German physician-anthropologists in Meiji Japan, a legacy that was mediated and relayed by Japanese progenies in Imperial Japan, and found its unexpected utility in postcolonial Korea.
Seirogan, a popular anti-diarrhoeal pill, is arguably one of the most successful pharmaceutical products of modern Japan. What is less known is that the Japanese army initially developed Seirogan ...during the Russo-Japanese War as the ‘Conquer-Russia-Pill’, which was later marketed to the public by private manufacturers. Previous scholars have emphasised the top–down governmental method of mobilising private sectors to manipulate public opinion for the cause of external imperialist expansion and domestic stability during wartime Japan. But the matrix that the Conquer-Russia-Pill allows us to glimpse is an inverted power relation among the state, commercial sectors, and imperial citizens. While the Japanese government remained indifferent if not hostile to jingoistic pharmaceutical manufacturers who could easily disrupt international relations, pharmaceutical companies quickly recognised and exploited the opportunities that the Conquer-Russia-Pill and its symbolism provided under the banner of the empire. In turn, Japanese consumers reacted to commercial sermons carefully anchored in patriotic and militaristic discourses and images by opening their wallets. In other words, the popularity of the Conquer-Russia-Pill was a culmination of the convergence of a governmental initiative to enhance military capabilities, the commercial ingenuity of pharmaceutical manufacturers, and a consumer response to patriotic exhortations.
In the study of German expatriates in Asia, the active participation and input of local host societies has often been ignored. Using an influential group of Germans in Meiji Japan (1868 – 1912) and ...their relationship to the host society as a case study, this essay argues that "Germanness", a concept that has been long regarded as the exclusive domain of German nationals, was subject to global influence, articulated, created, and imagined by those who wanted to define it for their own interests and agenda. In Meiji Japan, the appropriation and embodiment of Germanness by German-educated Japanese elites (not a quality exclusive to ethnic Germans) functioned as scaffolding for the enduringly positive image of Germany throughout the tumultuous decades of the 1890s and 1900s, while dislodging German professionals from their privileged positions in Meiji Japan.
Oxidative coupling reaction of 1‐hexyl–3,4‐dimethylpyrrole affords a conjugated conducting poly(1‐hexyl‐3,4‐dimethyl‐2,5‐pyrrolylene) (PHDP), which is completely soluble in common organic solvents. ...The luminescence of PHDP is comparable to that of poly(N‐vinylcarbazole) (PVK), which has been widely used in electroluminescence devices. The quantum efficiency of PHDP is 2.5 times higher than that of PVK. A rationalization is presented relating the conductivity of PHDP to its polymer structure.
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