The Formation of Shanghai Customs Quarantine System based on Medical Inspection: Acceptance and Transformation between England-Shanghai-Joseon from 1872 to 1894 (2022)
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the process of establishing a quarantine system based on medical inspection by Shanghai Customs. England was the first to introduce a quarantine system based on medical inspection during the nineteenth century; with the majority of the Shanghai Customs administration being English, this system was able to be adopted with ease, and it was later transformed and accepted in Joseon. This paper further investigates the details of the actual medical inspection conducted by the Customs Medical Officer (CMO) who worked at the forefront of the actual quarantine as a medical inspector. In the nineteenth century, International Sanitary Conferences were held in Paris, Vienna, and Constantinople to discuss the process of quarantine and public health. Furthermore, the Public Health Act was passed in England in 1872. This Act established port sanitary authorities in each of England’s ports to carry out medical inspections. This medical inspection enabled healthy and infected people to be separated from each other instead of conventional isolation. The duties of the CMO would consist of boarding any incoming ship to check for any infected people. Any infected persons would then be sent to a non-quarantine hospital, and the ship was sanitized. This concept of quarantine based on medical inspection was borrowed by Shanghai Customs. The unique political situation in Shanghai, which consisted of multiple imperial concessions, necessitated the adaptation of England’s medical quarantine concept to suit the special environment in which the Shanghai Customs was located, and by 1875, the Shanghai Customs quarantine medical inspection system was established. In this system, patients found in the Customs quarantine medical inspection were sent to a non-quarantine hospital in the settlement. Due to the extraterritoriality, the extent of the authority of the Customs Medical Officer was dependent on agreements with the possibility to be granted a one-time or temporary position after conferring with the Shanghai local government and consuls in each country. The Treaty Ports of Joseon were similar to Shanghai with regards to the presence of the Customs system alongside different settlements. The Joseon ports went through another transformation when the Commissioner of Shanghai Customs, H. F. Merrill, who also served as the Chief Commissioner of Seoul, accepted the Shanghai Customs’ modified concept of medical inspection in 1887. The process of acceptance and transformation of the medical quarantine concept leading to the ‘England-Shanghai-Joseon’ connection shows that the concept of medical quarantine in the nineteenth century spread from England to Joseon through Shanghai Customs as a medium.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Hanmin Park;
(2020)
Cholera epidemic and quarantine of open ports in Joseon in 1886
(/isis/citation/CBB616013276/)
Article
Qing Jin;
(2020)
The Process of Establishing His Corean Majesty's Customs Service Quarantine System and the Response to the Influx of Infectious Diseases from 1886 to 1893
(/isis/citation/CBB813991142/)
Article
Benoît Pouget;
(2020)
Quarantine, Cholera, and International Health Spaces: Reflections on 19th-Century European Sanitary Regulations in the Time of SARS-COV-2
(/isis/citation/CBB929519965/)
Article
Kyu-hwan Sihn;
(2021)
Concealment and Disclosure: The Cholera Crisis of 1969–70 in Korea
(/isis/citation/CBB187677894/)
Book
Krista Maglen;
(2014)
The English System: Quarantine, Immigration and the Making of a Port Sanitary Zone
(/isis/citation/CBB997329781/)
Article
Kiseok Kwon;
(2021)
Composition and Genealogical Relation Network of the Medical Family in the Late Joseon Dynasty
(/isis/citation/CBB136939245/)
Article
Junho Oh;
(2021)
The surface and the back of late Joseon medicine - Centered on medical knowledge system
(/isis/citation/CBB446928905/)
Article
Chaekun Oh;
(2021)
Joseon physician Heo Joon’s Smallpox Medicine and ‘Syndrome differentiation (辨證)’
(/isis/citation/CBB884386255/)
Article
Young-ah Lee;
(2021)
The study on the first women doctors in Korea, AHN Soo-kyung, KIM Young-heung, and KIM Hae-ji
(/isis/citation/CBB037613215/)
Article
Paul Slack;
(2022)
End of a Pandemic? Contemporary Explanations for the End of Plague in 18th‑Century England
(/isis/citation/CBB413574863/)
Article
Euan C Roger;
(2020)
‘To Be Shut Up’: New Evidence for the Development of Quarantine Regulations in Early-Tudor England
(/isis/citation/CBB555486469/)
Thesis
Wolford, Kathryn;
(2012)
Infective Discourse: Printed Debates Concerning the Spread of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England
(/isis/citation/CBB001567364/)
Article
Eun Kyung Choi;
Jong-Koo Lee;
(2016)
Changes of Global Infectious Disease Governance in 2000s: Rise of Global Health Security and Transformation of Infectious Disease Control System in South Korea
(/isis/citation/CBB662186832/)
Article
Lee, S. H.;
(2014)
Joining WHO of Republic of Korea and the Projects in the 1950s
(/isis/citation/CBB001422419/)
Book
Joseph Sassoon;
(2022)
The Sassoons : The great global merchants and the making of an empire
(/isis/citation/CBB045881905/)
Book
Chieko Nakajima;
(2018)
Body, Society, and Nation – The Creation of Public Health and Urban Culture in Shanghai
(/isis/citation/CBB681166550/)
Article
Jeongeun Jo;
(2020)
Smallpox Vaccine and Resident Responses in Modern Shanghai: Focusing on Regional and Cultural Comparison
(/isis/citation/CBB875185916/)
Book
Foxhall, Katherine;
(2012)
Health, Medicine, and the Sea: Australian Voyages, c. 1815--1860
(/isis/citation/CBB001200673/)
Book
Alex Chase-Levenson;
(2020)
The Yellow Flag: Quarantine and the British Mediterranean World, 1780-1860
(/isis/citation/CBB481671225/)
Article
Huffard, R. Scott, Jr.;
(2013)
Infected Rails: Yellow Fever and Southern Railroads
(/isis/citation/CBB001200324/)
Be the first to comment!