Research On Social Status Of Doctors During The Yuan Dynasty

This thesis focuses on social status of doctors during the Yuan Dynasty, and is composed of three parts.The first part is about doctors’ political position, which is an important constituent element of social status. The bureaucratic system of the Yuan Dynasty offered opportunities of securing official positions to doctors, such as drafting, recommending,or imperial medical examination. As an official doctor, someone could easily get into the palace and might have chances to impact the political situation, or even being local official.The second part is about how scholars looked on doctors, and the influence of their view. Scholars belonged to elite class in ancient China, which meant that their attitude would affect doctors ’ social status directly. During the Yuan Dynasty,scholars advocated medical science so much that their views of doctors were always good. At the same time, doctors curried with Confucianism, so that they could win the favor of scholars. Because of the backward medical technology at that time, scholars needed doctors with outstanding skills to keep their healthy, which gave doctors a way to improve reputation. Therefore, doctors were absorbed into social network of scholars. Although it was not entirely utilitarian for the dealings between doctors and scholars, this behavior did improve doctors’ social status.The third part is about the phenomenon that scholars transfer to doctors. Social status of doctors was affirmed not only by scholars’ evaluation, but also by their action which put being a doctor into occupation planning. There were lots of examples of scholars who couldn’t get into the official circle transferring to doctors during the Yuan Dynasty. The reason was a popular sense dated back to the Song Dynasty, which was “being a good official, or being a good doctor”.