Dongui Bogam
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| “Exemplar of Korean medicine” | ||||||||
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The Dongui bogam is an important book in traditional Korean medicine.
It describes herbs that can be found on the Korean Peninsula, as the herbal books from Mainland China covered ingredients that showed “properties different from local medicines”, or were “not easily found locally”.
In comparison to the Hyang-yak jipseongbang (향약집성방), the Dongui bogam is more systematic. Its basic theory is based on the Naegyeong (내경).
Heo Jun(허준) started working on the Dongui bogam in the 29th year of King Seonjo's reign (1596) as requested by the king. The book was completed in the 2nd year of King Gwanghaegun's reign (1610) and was published by Nae-uiwon (내의원, “royal hospital”). The Dongui bogam consists of 25 volumes. It was started by Heo Jun by the king's request but was stopped because of the second Japanese invasion of Korea in 1597. After the war, the king once more ordered Heo Jun to complete the book and this time, the King allowed about 500 books kept in the national library to investigate. From then, Heo Jun kept writing the book, but before it was completed, the king died. It was completed in the second year of his successor's reign as the fruit of 15 years of hard work.
