Ancient Medical Personnels in the period of the Three Kingdoms

삼국시대(三國時代)의 의약인물(醫藥人物)

It is very critical to specify certain medical personnels in defining the history of certain era. Due to the limited source of information and lack of thorough research, there still aren't enough study grounded on concrete historical investigation. Authors attempted to investigate those medicinal personnels engaged in Three Kingdoms period in terms of the activity area, relation with religion and their role in medical system and medical exchange. The sum of recorded medical personnels in Three Kingdoms period numbers 50 of which 6 belonged to Kokooryo, 18 to Baekje, 7 to Shilla and 19 to Unified Shilla. There might existed far more medical personnels who tried to alleviate the suffering of the people and were not recorded in the documents. The more earlier in times, the more medicine gets the religious tinge. This is not the exception for the period of the Three Kingdoms and those medicine men, wizard doctors and priest doctors were playing important role in healing people and processing crude drugs. The system of royal physician and medical education facility were established and doctors and pharmacists, shamanic doctor, herb collectors, Kongbong's doctor(供奉醫師), Kongbong's diviners(供奉卜師) took leads in medicine in those times. Those folkloric healers also took part in. Korea imported chinese medicine and Japan employed chinese medicine via Korea or directly from China and developed into traditional japanese medicine. In this process those who emigrated from Baekje and Kogooryo and their offsprings took an active part. Since the limited source of information of Three Kingdoms, we only can infer the me야cal environment of those times by featuring the activities of medical personnels.