목에다 보이지 않는청진기를 걸고 손에는 “부모도 반의사가 되어야한다-소아가정간호 백과”책을 들고 태어난 안면도 태생 이상원 소아과전문의
Anmyeondo-born pediatrician Lee Sang-won, born in Anmyeon-eup, Taean-gun, Chungcheongnam-do, with an invisible stethoscope around his neck and holding the book “Parents Should Become Half-Doctors Too – Encyclopedia of Pediatrics and Family Nursing” in his hand
He is the eldest son of nine children born to his father, Lee Si-woo, a farmer in Jangdeunggae, and his mother, Jeong Hyang-seop, a farmer. He was born in a three-thatch house with an invisible stethoscope around his neck and holding the book “Parents Should Become half-Doctors Too – Encyclopedia of Pediatrics and Family Nursing” in his hand.
When I woke up in the three-thatch bedroom, there were bedbugs crawling on the walls, and when I pressed my hand, red blood flowed. On top of that, mosquitoes kept biting me at night. There was not a single mosquito net. During the day, fleas were annoying. Lice crawled on my head and body, biting and laying eggs.
When I went to the bathroom, white roundworm parasites wriggled around. Sometimes, I even saw tapeworms. Adults or children got malaria from a mosquito bite.
At that time, Anmyeondo was the seventh largest island among Korean islands with six elementary schools, but there was not a single doctor who graduated from medical school until I came to the United States in 1968.
My six-year-old sister had a sore ear, so I went to a general store in Jungjang-dong, 10 li away, by myself, and bought penicillin pills. I gave her penicillin for 2-3 days, and she got better.
My mother got malaria, so I bought some Santoning from the store and gave her some.
My mother was always sick, so I bought her some snake liquor and gave her some medicinal herbs like Bongyang, Banha, and Changchol that I dug up in the mountains.
When I was attending Hongseong Middle School, I went to the Hongseong Market and heard that they advertised tiger liver and skin as a cure for all diseases, so I bought some and gave them to my mother.
I heard that both Jandae and Changchul were good, so I had a hard time treating my mother’s illness while attending elementary and middle school. When I was a first year student at Yonsei Medical School, I first examined my mother’s heart with a stethoscope and found out that she had a heart disease and abnormal heart sounds, which was the first time I knew she had heart disease.
When I was a student at Yonsei Medical School, President Park Jeong-he created the no doctor village system in Korea. After hearing the news, I established a medical doctor-village relationship with my native Anmyeondo and Yonsei Medical School. For four years, I went to Anmyeondo with a professor and medical students and me from Yonsei Medical School, providing free medical treatment to the Anmyeondo medical village.
After providing free medical treatment, I didn’t go back straight to Seoul during vacation and provided free medical treatment in the Anmyeondo village, so I kept complaining that I would become a member of the National Assembly later.
I went to Anjung Middle School, a round trip of 20 li, by myself for six years, even when it snowed, rained, or was windy. At the graduation ceremony, I was the top student and the top prize was a shovel.
After that, I finished Hongseong Middle School and entered Hongseong High School. During my first year, I developed a rash on the back of my neck and squeezed it with my hands and applied Jo Myeong-rae ointment. The next day, I had a high fever and crawled 20 minutes from my boarding house to the provincial hospital.
The doctor at the provincial hospital was a graduate of Seoul National University.
He just looked at my throat, gave me an aspirin, and returned to my boarding house.
I must have been very sick because my boarding house owner contacted my mother-father who lived 20 li away and started treating me with an oriental doctor.
Thinking back now, I got sepsis (my current diagnosis). After that, the oriental doctor gave me one dose of herbal medicine a day and one injection of penicillin a day for three months, and never visited me for a visit. When neighbors came, he said loudly, “I guess I’m going to be in a coma so that everyone in the living room and the upper room can hear.” My mother never visited me in Anmyeondo.
I lay down like this, got an injection, and was treated, and then one day I went to a western doctor in Gwangcheon. That doctor was a doctor who came down from Seoul because of the 625 war. The doctor examined me from head to toe and diagnosed that I had pus in my thigh and leg. He took a bowl of pus out of my thigh and leg. I survived, took a year off from high school, and attended Hongseong High School for four years.
The first doctor I saw, a Seoul National University graduate from a provincial hospital, gave me aspirin and didn’t call my parents and did not give me any follow-up treatment. The next oriental doctor I saw didn’t even examine the pus in my leg. of it. The year I graduated from Hongsung Sung High School, I was the top student out of 500 graduates from Hong High School.
Born in Anmyeondo, I was the first in Korean history to enter Yonsei University College of Medicine. After graduating from Yonsei University College of Medicine in 1963, I passed the national exam for Korean medical licenses and received my Korean medical license.
During my time in medical school, I received a national scholarship, a school scholarship, money I earned from handing out newspapers, money I earned from tutoring, and money my parents gave me, and I graduated from medical school with excellent grades in six years. I passed the ECFM exam to become a doctor in the US during my 4th year of medical school, but I, who was born with a soil spoon in my mouth, shed tears and chose a different path.
After graduating, I worked for 2 years in Seosan as a non-doctor medical villager, and then served as a military officer in the Republic of Korea Army for 3 years. After that, I went to the US and majored in pediatrics at UCONN Medical School and Yale Medical School. When I practiced pediatrics in Willimantic, Connecticut for 32 years, the residents often praised me as a good doctor.
I was a professor of pediatrics at Kosin Medical School, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Connecticut Medical School, a top doctor in the US, and a top pediatrician in the US. I am the author of the encyclopedia of children, adolescents, and parenting health and I run Drleepdiatrics.com. (Here is a newspaper article praising the doctor who is the best in the world in the First, Do No Harm policy, and a photo of the pediatrician examining a patient, and the book Encyclopedia of Pediatric Family Nursing – Parents Should Become Anti-Doctors, too”.
When I think about myself, I think I am one of the rare doctors that God sent to this world.
6/9/2027
Drleepediatrics.com
John Sangwon Lee,MD,.FAAP