The first point, he observes, that seems to require attention is to discard all equivocal terms as much as possible; and, in cases where this cannot be done, to assign a fixed and individual sense to every term, and never to employ it in any other sense. Sauvages has set an admirable example of this rule in the synopsis prefixed to the different classes of his nosology: nor has less attention been shown to it by Dr. Willan in the correct definitions prefixed to his treatise on Cutaneous Dis cases. The next rule recommended is that of creating as few new words as possible; and, among those already in use, of confining ourselves to the same term to express the same idea, even where we have a choice of numerous synonyms. struma, and phthysis, will render such an addition absolutely necessary: and the works of Fracastoro, Baglivi, Sydenham, Boerhaave, Sauvages, Linnéus, and Cullen, may be successfully resorted to for the purpose. To Fracastoro we owe the term syphilis: to Baglivi we are indebted for hysteria, and many other convenient terms; to Boerhaave the general use of the terminal ifis, as significative of inflammation. To Sauvages, more than to any other modern author whatever, we are indebted for a revival of a great variety of terms derived from the Greek physicians, which ought never to have become obsolete. Linnéus and Cullen have shown far less attachment to a Greek origin, and have been less select in their terms. Yet the former may be said to have given us A third direction is, that we limit our nomen- atecnia for impotence, a term unquestionably preclature as much as possible to one language alone. ferable to anaphrodisia; and the latter to have naIt has already appeared, says the author, that even turalized, though he did not invent, pyrexia, an the nosologies of most repute are a mass of mere elegant and expressive compound, very inadegibberish, from their unclassical combination of quately expressed by TUPTION, HUPETOS OUVEXAS, different tongues that were never meant to coalesce. KUPITOS σUVETIxos, or as they are spelled in HippoOf these different tongues there can be no great crates, who wrote in the lonic dialect, uvex and perplexity in determining which ought to have UVITIOS, or indeed any similar phrasing of the the preference. Among those of vernacular use Greek writers. Linnéus and Cullen, however, there is no one that would be allowed such a pre- and especially the latter, have great merit as excedency and, were such a precedency admitted, purgators and proscribers of a vast mass of absurd there is no one in possession of names sufficient and useless terms. to distinguish of itself every disease of which a system of nosology is expected to treat. Dr. Macbride's system is a sufficient proof of the truth of this observation. His nomenclature aims at being English; yet the names under several of his orders consist entirely of exotic terms, and render most of them of Latin, Greek, and English, uncouthly mixed together for the sake of convenience, like foreigners from all countries at a Hamburgh hotel. The only languages therefore that remain to us are the Greek and Latin; and of these two there can be no difficulty in deciding in favour of the former, when we reflect that by far the greater part of our technology is already derived from it; and that it possesses a facility of combination to which the Latin has no pretensions. Having thus determined, our next care should be to banish every Latin, as well as every Arabic, Spanish, Italian, and German word in favour of its Greek synonym, wherever such synonym can be fairly traced in the Greek writers. Hippocrates is the first author to whom the nosologist should have recourse for this purpose; and in his failure he may perhaps be best supplied from Asclepiades, Celsus, Cœlius Aurelianus, Galen, and Aetius, with an occasional glance at Aristotle as he proceeds, from whom he may frequently glean many a useful term. From these writers the selection should be ample; for a blank of nearly twelve centuries shortly afterwards ensues, in which it will be hardly possible to sift out a word in any degree worthy of preservation: the Arabic writers, who chiefly fill it, having added little, except in the case of small-pox, and a few cutaneous diseases, to the common stock of medical information, and having contented themselves with writing commentaries upon Hippocrates and Galen. Descending to the fifteenth century, we may again enrich our vocabulary from a few of the writers who then flourished; and may continue to add to it from the most celebrated of their successors. The origin, indeed, of a variety of diseases unknown to the Greeks, such as small-pox, syphilis, sea-scurvy, rickets, together with a great increase and diversity in the families of others, as The name of Sydenham ought never to be mentioned but with gratitude: he was truly the Hippocrates of his age; yet he has little pretensions to the character of a nomenclator; having rather confined himself to the more important part of marking and describing than of naming diseases; and even in the latter case he has generally preferred a Latin derivation. His nova febris has been exchanged with the consent of every one for the miliaris of the authors of the Journal de Medicine. From a few other writers, and especially the monogrammists, something may also be gleaned occasionally worthy acceptance. Nostalgia is a word of Nenter's invention, and intended to put to flight the pothopairidalgia of Zuinger, in which, to the consolation of every man's lips and ears, it has very effectually succeeded. Morton, I believe, first appropriated the term phthisis to pulmonary consumption; and Dover diabetes, a word invented by Aretaus, to the disease now known by this name, but for which Galen used dipsacus. Scorbutus we have received from Germany, principally through Hoffman and Boerhaave; and however objectionable its source, it has been too long naturalized to be exchanged for any other term. To whom we are indebted for scrofula I know not: Sauvages gives a reference to Allen; but it was certainly in use long before Allen's time. Struma, as employed by Celsus, seems to be a preferable term, and is continued by Linnéus. Variola, 'raricella, and rubeola, are upon the whole approved of. Trichoma is the invention of Jachius, a term strictly classical, and in every respect superior to the plica polonica of Starnigel, or the plica Belgarum of Schenck. The Greek terms we are in possession of have chiefly reached us through the medium of Latin authors or translators; and hence they are gene rally characterized by a latinized complexion, and especially in their terminations. A rule being thus established, it should be adhered to in future; and even the existing exceptions be made to comply with it, wherever this can be accomplished gracefully and without constraint. Every one writes typhus and synochus, instead of tuphos and sunochos, which are the Greek words; parorchydium instead of parorchudion. But if this orthography be correct, the syrigmos of Sagar and Linnéus should be syrigmus; the causos of Vogel (if retained at all), cansus, while his puosuria should be pyosuria, or rather pyuria, which is a more common and a far better compound. In like manner we write paralysis, instead of paralusis, and ly sa, instead of lussa, wherever it is employed, as I think it ought always to be in the place of hydrophobia, a term very unnecessarily invented by Caelius Aurelianus, and by no means pathagnomonic of the disease it is now generally made use of to signify, since the symptom it indicates is sometimes a concomitant of other diseases, and sometimes absent from that to which it gives a name. But if lyssa and paralysis be the proper mode of spelling, then lues and lume, which are equally derivatives from λvw, solvo, disolvo, are strictly speaking improper, and ought from the first to have been written analogously yes and hyme. Custom, however, has so long sanctioned the use of luos that I dare not recommend it to be changed; yet the point is of little consequence, as this term has been long sinking under the more common term of syphilis. The rule of most importance however, and what, Indeed, appears absolutely necessary to a due simplicity and precision in our nomenclature, is that we pay a scrupulous attention to the sense in which we employ the affixed and suffixed particles (sometimes prepositions, but not always so), which are used in compound terms to express the peculiar quality of the disease denoted by the theme or radical. Nothing can equal the perplexity which at present exists in medical language, or the difficulty which a student, and especially an unlettered student, lies under from a nonobservance of this rule. The preposition para (mapa) is used in such a variety of senses, as, instead of guiding the judgement, it is perpetually leading it astray. The particle a (e) is subject to the same observation; being sometimes employed as a negative, to indicate total privation, and sometimes confounded with dys (dus) merely to imply morbid or defective action: while, as though to make the balance even, dys, which is commonly used to express morbid or defective action alone, is at times also confounded with a, to signify total privation. Thus dys-menorrhoea, which is often restricted to difficult men struation, or menstruation accompanied with pain and other morbid symptoms, signifies, in Sagar and Linnéus, suppressed catamenia, the amenorrhoea of Vogel and Cullen; while in the Cullenian system, the first order of the class locales confounds , zapa, and dus, by using them both synonymously, and in the same latitude of senses. Algia is a termination frequently and elegantly employed to express pain; but the Greeks had, also, other words by which to denote the same feeling: and hence, unfortunately, our nosologists, in a morbid hunt after variety, have clogged the language of medicine with such terminations as copus (noños), odyne (odvm), and often agra (aypa): when, to his utter confusion, the student not unfrequently meets with such synonyms as ostalgia, stocopus, ostodyne, perplexingly and uselessly varied to denote the same common idea of bone-ach. In like manner cephal-algia is made use of to import head-ach, gastr‐odynia, belly-ach, pudend-agra (Lin. iv. i. 58), painful sores in the pudendum, and ter-odynia, night-mare, or sleep-walking, in which dum appears to be used without any determinate sense. Itis, in the same manner, is often employed at the close of words as significant of local inflammation. I do not profess to know very exactly the derivation of this term, nor have the etymologists attempted it for us. Probably it is εμαι, which in the Iliad means impetu feror, and if so it is radically appropriate; but it is to Boerhaave, as I have already observed, that we are indebtedfor the first general use of it in this peculiar sense, and a sense which is now approved and adopted by every one. Yet if its be thus appropriated, it is impossible not to condemn such terms as rachitis, and hydrorachtüs, ascites, and tympanites, which have no reference whatever to local inflammation; or arthritis in Linnéus's nosology, which has nearly as little; the local inflammations being in this system enumerated under class iii. or phlogistici, while arthritis occurs under class iv. or dolorosi. It is farther to be observed, on the contrary, that in all the nosologies we meet with a great variety of local inflammations unindicated in the words selected to express them by any such termination as itis, and evincing almost every anomaly of termination, as ophthalmia, cynanche, pneumonia, podagra, all which occur in Dr. Cullen's class i. or pyrexic, order phlegmasiæ. Rhea and rhagia are terminations capable, perhaps, of admitting an easy distinction, but which have often been used indiscriminately. Both these, indeed, are employed, with a single exception, to import a preternatural flux of some kind or other; but rhagia, which ought to be regarded as an elision of hæmorrhagia, is usually, and ought always to be, limited to a preternatural flux of blood, as in rhinor-rhagia (epistaxis), enter-rhugia (blood from the intestinal canal), and menor-rhagia; while Thea is fairly applicable to a preternatural flux of any other sort, as otor-rhea, gonor-rhæa, leucor-rhæa, diar-hea, and perir-rhea, a term employed by Hippocrates in the sense of enuresis. The single exception alluded to is menorrhea, which imports a natural flux, and in a healthy proportion; and to avoid the anomoly resulting from this single exception, Mr. Good advises to exchange the term for its synonymcatamenia, or rather for menia alone, without the preposition, which is altogether superfluous, and is already omitted in all the compounds of p, as also in the Latin homonyms, menses and menstruatio. Dia (da) is employed with meanings somewhat different, but possessing in every instance a shade of resemblance, and always involving the idea of separation; as in dia-betes and diar-rhea, passing or flowing through; dia-crisis and dia-gnosis, judgment or distinction by the separation of symptom from symptom; dia-stole, dia-stesis, dilatation, or the separation of part from part. To reduce, then, the anomalies thus pointed out to some degree of regularity, to make them intelligible to the student, and practically useful to the adept, Mr. Good concludes with submitting the following regulations. 1. Let the particle a (a) express alone the idea of total privation; as in amentia, agalactia, amenorrhea. 2. Let dys (dv) express alone the idea of deficiency, as its origin, duw or duu, most naturally imports, and as we find it employed to express in dys-pnca, dys-cinesia, and dys-phagia. 3. As an opposite to dys, let en (a) be employed 8. Let rhæa (from jaw, fluo) express a preternatural flux of any other kind. as an augmentive particle, as we have it in enharmonia, en-telechia, and en-ergetic. En is not often indeed a medical compound, nor do I recol- By adopting these few regulations, which, inlect its being employed in more than two instances; stead of innovating, only aim at reforming, our encephalon, in which it has the sense of interior, a technology, if I mistake not, observes the author, word indeed that has been long falling into dis- would be in many respects equally improved in use; and enuresis, in which it imports excess, and simplicity, in elegance, and in precision; the stu is consequently used as now recommended. Thus dent would easily commit it to memory, and the restricted, and dus will have the force of practitioner have a real meaning in the terms he and xarw, but will be far more manageable in the makes use of. To prove the truth of these asserformation of compounds. tions the subjoined table will be sufficient, which may be easily extended to any length by the use of other particles or prepositions, or the introduction of other themes or radical terms of the medical vocabulary; which, when thus simplified and cleared of the numerous synonyms and equivalents that at present overload it, might be reduced to, at least, a third part of its present length, and be rendered as much more perspicuous as it would be more concise. 4. Let agra (aya) be restrained to express the idea of simple morbid affection in an organ, synonymously with the Latin passiv, or the berh of the Arabians. 5. Let ilis (17) express alone the idea of inflammatory action, as in cephalitis, gastritis, nephritsi. 6. Let algia (anyia) express alone the idea of pain or ach, to the banishment of such useless synonyms as odyne and copos or copus. 7. Let rhagia (from freew, rumpo) be confined to express a preternatural flux of blood. |