The dwindling of the medical lexicon. It matters.

I often wondered what got me here. I am a reader. Give me a book, an apple and a bus ride home and I was lost in the words. Send me to school and make me create 3×5 word cards for hundreds of new words and I was hooked. Then off to high school where science gave me a new vocabulary. Words could be traced to the civilizations of Plato, Confucius, and Freud.  Never had the phrase “medicine is an art” intertwined so wisely as when I realized central pontine myelinosis was the illness deemed for the character Monsieur Villefort in The Count of Monte Cristo. The scientific world and literary world unite! However, as a student of science turned into a resident of medicine and into a doctor for patients, our language is becomes shredded. We once exalted ourselves to know the finer points defining and spelling our new language. We learned the behind the scenes reasoning for medical expressions, such as, Baker’s asthma.  We wondered how many pityriasis and roseas there were and the world of difference between erythema toxicum and eczema herpeticum.  We could express with concise detail why it’s herpangina and not stomatitis and not hand-foot –and mouth disease. Students of medicine not only acquire these words but its history. Medicine has a past and it is lyrical. But the rest of the health industry tentacles want to get their hands in our word jar. They do not want to learn what our words define, pronounce or signify. They’ll easily look it up online and ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs