Abstract
This paper attempts to reconstruct the historical development of the conceptualization of the illness li/lai in China that most contemporary historians of medicine consider to be the equivalent of leprosy. It is, in fact, impossible to prove that li/lai and leprosy mean exactly the same illness(es). What one can work out from old medical texts from the Antiquity to the late 18th century regarding the li/lai illness is the evoluation of the terminology that reflects changes in the nosology of the disease(s). Terms like li/lai, ta-feng (big-wind), ma-feng (numb-wind), ta ma-feng (big-numb-wind), etc. were used in different periods to describe the disease(s) that show(s) many of the symptoms that are strongly suggestive of leprosy. However, differences in the causes and treatment of the illness(es) signified by these terms show that there were important changes in the conceptualization and classification of this li/lai category over the past centuries. It would be problematic, for instance, to presume that what Ming-Ch'ing texts describe as ma-feng, which is currently used to translate "leprosy", is exactly the same thing as li or lai in old, classical texts.
There is, nonetheless, an obvious thread of continuity that goes through these terms implying that they do belong to a same, or comparable group of illness(es). Changes in the nosology of li/lai reflect influences of medical thoughts of different periods, regional and socio-economic variations, as well as the impact of other newer diseases, including syphilis.
Keywords
leprosy in China, li/lai, ma-feng/ta-feng, historical nosology
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