• The Journal of Korean Medical History
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.143-158
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to examine the prescription of Geoseohwajung-tang which often appears in Kim Yeoung-hun's medical records and how he employed this prescription. Geoseohwajung-tang is a prescription that can be found in no books of medicine in East Asia other than Kim Yeoung-hun's medical records, his posthumous work, Cheongganguigam, and Seungjeongwon Ilki, the diaries of royal secretariat of the Joseon dynasty. It was mostly used for digestive problems resulted from eating wrong food in summer and diversely applied by changing the composition of the medicinal ingredients according to the patient's symptoms. To see how Geoseohwajung-tang was used clinically, the researcher analyzed Kim Yeoung-hun's medical records written in 1915~1924. Among his total 21,369 medical records, 549 ones included Geoseohwajung-tang, and all of them were in July to September, so we can see that it was a prescription for the summer season. The use of the prescription was not highly related with the patient's gender, occupation, or age. The names of the diseases are mostly diarrhea, dysentery, acute vomiting with diarrhea, and all of them are highly related with diarrhea. The causes of them are mostly summer-heat, dampness, and food poison.