Historical Study of the Etymological Form and Translational Process of Gout (Tongfeng)

Cho, Jae Heung; Jung, Jae Young

Abstract

This study aims to address questions regarding the translation of 'gout' into 'tongfeng' in East Asia. To this end, the formation process of the origins, 'gout' from Western medicine and 'tongfeng' from Oriental medicine, and the translational process were investigated through the relevant records and literature dating from the 16th century on. Symptoms associated with gout were originally mentioned in ancient Egypt and various terminologies were used to refer to gout, such as podagra, cheiragra and gonogra. The word 'gout', which is derived from Latin, was used for the first time in the 13th century. The reason for this linguistic alteration is thought to be the need for a comprehensive term to cover the various terms for gout in symptomatic body parts, since it can occur concurrently in many joints. However, it took hundreds of years before gout was independently established as a medical term. In oriental medicine, terms describing diseases with features similar to gout include bibing, lijiefeng, baihufeng and tongfeng. Among them, the concept of 'tongfeng' has been established since the Jin and Yuan dynasties. The cause, prevention and various treatments for tongfeng were proposed throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties. The early translation of gout and tongfeng in East Asia, respectively, is estimated to have occurred in the 18th century. The first literature translating gout in China was 'An English and Chinese Vocabulary in the Court Dialect (yinghua yunfu lijie)'. From the publication of this book until the late 19th century, gout was translated into an unfamiliar Chinese character 'Jiu feng jiao', likely because the translation was done mostly by foreign missionaries at the time, and they created a new word on the basis of Western medicine instead of researching and translating similar diseases in oriental medicine. In Japan, the first book translating gout was 'A Pocket Dictionary of the English and Japanese Language (Eiwa taiyaku shuchin jisho)', Japan's the first English-Japanese translation dictionary. In this book, gout was translated into tongfeng, a word adopted from oriental medicine. These differences from China are thought to be caused by Rangaku doctors, who, influenced by oriental medicine in the Jin and Yuan dynasties, played an important role in translating medical terminology at that time.