[The Japanese term "kishitsu" as the antonym of the functional neurological disorder].

Abstract

The term organic disease has been used as the antonym of functional neurological disorder (FND), which was once called hysteria. Recently, the term "structural" is proposed instead of "organic". This is because the English word "organic" has two meanings: "related to the living organism" and "related to the organ, a part of the body". When the first meaning is thought of, the traditional usage of the "non-organic" seems strange since even FND takes place within the human body. There has been two Japanese translations for the word "organic", "yuki" and "kishitsu". Ogata Koan used the term "kishitsu-henseibyou" as the translation for a German word "desorganisationen" in 1857. Kawamoto Komin is known to have established the term "yuki kagaku" as the translation of organic chemistry in 1861, at the end of the Edo era. Kuwata Kohei used the term "kishitsu" as the translation for "structural" in 1872. In 1875, Tsuboi Ishun used "kishitsu" as the translation of "organic". He also used the term "yuki" in another book, and it is noteworthy that he used the two words as the translations of "organic" in two different meanings depending on the contexts. Thereafter, the lectures of Erwin von Bälz, Jean-Martin Charcot's "Tuesday Lessons", and other foreign texts were translated using the term "kishitsu" as the antonym of hysteria. Kawahara Hiroshi and Miura Kinnosuke also used "kishitsu", and the term was established as the standard. It is surprising and worth praise that the pioneers in late Edo and Meiji periods invented two Japanese terms translating "organic" corresponding to the two meanings of this foreign word. Considering these backgrounds, we would like to argue that the term "kishitsu (sei)" continues to be an appropriate term in Japanese used for the antonym of FND, and we need not to change the Japanese term to "kozo (sei)" in response to the change of the term in English.