Yi Chema and the Psychosocial Body in Late Nineteenth Century Korea

Conventional understandings of Chinese medicine, and by extension East Asian medicine, are that historical and contemporary discourses on the medical body have essentially revolved around a unitary body perception—the cosmological body as demonstrated by the use of concepts such as qi, yinyang, and the Five Phases. Notably, in this body conception, the material, spiritual and emotional dimensions are not separable from each other but are rather interconnected by means of allpervasive qi that resonates in the universe. However, East Asian medicine has in fact provided a far more diverse and dynamic landscape of conceptualizations of the body than has previously been assumed. Addressing this relatively ignored topography, this paper investigates medical thought about body structure that was proposed and practiced by Yi Chema 李濟馬 (1837-1900), a physician and Confucian in late nineteenth century Chosŏn 朝鮮 Korea. Rather than considering cosmological factors, he brought into play human affairs and agency in his discussion of the medical body. In the framework of his medical system, later referred to as Sasang 四象 (fourfold imaging) medicine, psychosocial characteristics—such as affective temperaments, cognitive traits, and behavioral dispositions—are inherently interwoven with the configuration of the viscera and body parts. Importantly, the physiological processes of this psychosocial body are not so much maintained by cosmologically resonating qi flowing throughout the body, but rather, they are activated by the human agent’s psychosocial drive to engage with the world. Yi Chema, through his conceptualization of the psychosocial body, envisaged an ideal world in which the qualities and differences of people should be acknowledged to the fullest extent. Thus he rejected hierarchical socio-cultural orderings of human beings in favor of a respect of heterogeneity. Yi Chema’s effort to promote the psychosocial body can be understood against the backdrop of late nineteenth century East Asia, where the mechanistic body of what was then seen as modern medicine was encroaching upon the cosmological body.