Medical Care in Baekje

[Wangyuneungta]
Welcome, welcome! Did you come to see me to ask me to treat your illness? Then you’ve come to the right place. I am a doctor from Baekje and my name is Wangyuneungta.

Allow me to show you around my house. The place at the front is my living space and the room to the left is my office. Sometimes my patients visit me here, so I’ve arranged my house so I can treat them more conveniently. Also, when I have time, I study medicine in my office.

Do you know how we used to treat people? Let me tell you how I treated soldiers who had been wounded on the battlefield. It was winter time and many suffered from frostbite because of the cold weather.

At that time, there was none of the ointments or drugs that we would use in such a situation today. When I had patients suffering from frostbite, I applied paulownia tree oil mixed with hair to their wounds. If patients came to me with bleeding wounds, I stopped the bleeding by applying a type of ore powder named ‘red ochre’. Indeed, I made full use of the various folk remedies available to me to treat our wounded soldiers.