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疳 (gān) is a phono-semantic compound: the sickness radical 疒 encloses the phonetic 甘 (gān, 'sweet'). In traditional Chinese medicine, it names a pediatric wasting condition, primarily affecting infants and young children, characterized by severe malnutrition, emaciation, poor digestion, and a distended abdomen. Ancient medical theories attributed this to overindulgence in sweet, rich foods that damaged the spleen and digestion, hence the character's pairing of the disease radical with 'sweet'.
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