Language learning

Some literal translations of some medical terms

The meniscus cartilage in your knee - "crescent cartilage"

Tonsils or enlarged lymph nodes - "almonds"

Scabies - "jarab." Someone who is very cheap is known as a jaraab, aka someone with scabies. Unfortunately I learned this word because there's 4 patients with scabies at the SCI house, and rumor has it scabies is rife in one of the Syrian camps in Amman.

A cold - "gribe", aka gripe, french for a cold

Duodenum - "the twelve" - bit of a longer story here. I was getting my haircut in the 7th Circle when my barber learned I was in medicine. He starts telling me he's had heartburn, stomach problems, and an "ulcer in the twelve" (قرحة بالاتنا عشر). The twelve what, I don't know, but I'm working on trying to figure that out. Given the context, I knew he was taking about his duodenum. But this reminded me of something. Back when I did a rotation at the San Francisco Free Clinic, I had a Cantonese patient who also had stomach problems. We had a volunteer translator who knew Cantonese well, but not always how to translate things into English, stumbling at one point when she told me that the patient had a problem in her "twelve finger organ" (no idea how that's said/written in Chinese). We had to go to Google Translate to figure out what exactly the twelve finger organ was, which is why it was such a memorable experience.

I wonder if the Chinese and Arab anatomists developed this name for the duodenum independently? It'd be an interesting history to learn who came up with it first and how it got from one language to the other.