Scrapie in Ancient China?
2005; American Association for the Advancement of Science; Volume: 309; Issue: 5736 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1126/science.309.5736.874b
ISSN1095-9203
Autores Tópico(s)Neurological diseases and metabolism
ResumoScrapie, the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy found in sheep, is generally traced back to the early 18th century, based on records in the UK, France, and Germany ([1][1]). However, I believe philological evidence suggests that the disease may have existed up to 2000 years earlier. Chinese characters are often composed of two parts. One component may hint at meaning, while the other gives the sound, or both may contribute to the meaning. Since these characters were developed from 3000 to 2000 years ago, “original intent” can only be inferred. One character for “pruritis” or “itchy” is composed of three parts, an outer wrapper meaning “disease” and inner parts meaning “hand” and “insect”: ![Figure][2] Another character for “itchy” combines “disease” and “sheep”: ![Figure][2] The English name “scrapie” arose because afflicted sheep suffer pruritis and wind up scraping off much of their coats. I propose that this dramatic symptom was known in ancient China and hence the combination of “disease” and “sheep” to make “pruritis.” The importance of sheep at that time in China is suggested by the character for nutrition, ![Graphic][3] , which combines ![Graphic][4] , to eat, with ![Graphic][5] , sheep. Chinese characters evolved over time, but this one has likely been unchanged for at least the past 1000 to 1500 years. A.D. 500 to 1000 is the era during which Japan adapted Chinese characters to the grammatically very different Japanese language. The character for “itchy” (kayui) in Japanese is identical to that used in traditional Chinese, indicating an ancient origin for this form of the character. Both ![Graphic][6] and ![Graphic][7] are pronounced “yang” in Mandarin Chinese and “yō” in Japanese, so it is possible that ![Graphic][8] is giving the sound. However, many disease-related characters seem to get both meaning and sound from the enclosed part: ![Graphic][9] (to know, “chih”) ![Graphic][10] (stupid, “chih”) ![Graphic][11] (a packet, “pao”) ![Graphic][12] (blister, “pao”) ![Graphic][13] (old, “ku”) ![Graphic][14] (chronic complaint, “ku”) ![Graphic][15] (bean, “tou”) ![Graphic][16] (smallpox, “tou”). The prion model for scrapie suggests that it should occur spontaneously at some low frequency in all sufficiently large herds. The remarkable stability of the scrapie agent suggests that infectivity may even be detectable in remains of ancient sheep. 1. [↵][17] 1. H. B. Parry , Scrapie Disease in Sheep–Historical, Clinical, Epidemiological, Pathological and Practical Aspects of the Natural Disease (Academic Press, London, 1983). [1]: #ref-1 [2]: pending:yes [3]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif [4]: /embed/inline-graphic-2.gif [5]: /embed/inline-graphic-3.gif [6]: /embed/inline-graphic-4.gif [7]: /embed/inline-graphic-5.gif [8]: /embed/inline-graphic-6.gif [9]: /embed/inline-graphic-7.gif [10]: /embed/inline-graphic-8.gif [11]: /embed/inline-graphic-9.gif [12]: /embed/inline-graphic-10.gif [13]: /embed/inline-graphic-11.gif [14]: /embed/inline-graphic-12.gif [15]: /embed/inline-graphic-13.gif [16]: /embed/inline-graphic-14.gif [17]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1 in text
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