Robert B. Taylor

Family medicine : principles and practice

This updated and revised edition presents topics in common family medicine with a new format that features 120 short chapters on: common problems of the elderly, care of acute lacerations, care of the patient with chronic pain, ocular trauma, ischemic heart disease, cardiovascular emergencies, and much more. New and timely topics include the management and care of the HIV-infected patient, environmental and occupational diseases, substance abuse, contraception and menopause. This reference is geared to the office setting and mirrors the unique perspective of the family physician. It emphasizes practical detail and, arranged by organ system, provides clear diagnostic and treatment guidelines.

Famous Persons as Patients

Famous persons develop illnesses, just like the rest of us, and when they do, what happens may affect the lives of many. This chapter looks at some persons with familiar names who had diseases such as gout, agoraphobia, depression, epilepsy, Alzheimer disease, and more—and the effect these illnesses had on others. Of course, historical records and legend are sometimes on shaky ground, and Chap. 9 tells some instances of retrospective diagnosis, including medical reconsideration of the cause of death of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, the health status of Joan of Arc, and the reason for the yellow hues in Vincent van Gogh’s later paintings.

Disease Detection and Diagnosis

Diagnosis, the first step in effective treatment, has evolved over the millennia during which healers have sought to rid patients of disease. Paracelsus wisely advocated patience in diagnosis, and Sir Dominic Corrigan championed careful observation—just looking. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, physician author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, spoke to the significance of small clues, while Paul Dudley White reminded us of the importance of a good medical history.

Descriptive Medical Terms: Activities, Actions, and Appearances

This chapter tells stories of medical words that arose because something clinical or scientific looked like something else in everyday life. The collarbone looked like a key, or clavicle in Latin. Bulimia combines two Greek words meaning hungry as an ox. The derivation of the word chorea is a Greek word, khoreia, meaning “dance.” Many of the words in this chapter have evolved in colorful ways, such as how a Greek word meaning “to stupefy” came to be the name of the carotid artery in the neck and why the sacrum has been considered to be a holy bone.

Medical Words with Confusing and Controversial Origins

There are many medical words whose origins are confusing or even controversial. Some represent misunderstandings, such as the word artery coming from a Greek word meaning “windpipe.” Some are mislabeling: Morton neuroma is not a tumor of the nerve, and hay fever is not caused by hay. And some are simply curious connections, such as how the word menstruum came to mean “solvent” in medieval times. This chapter tells the stories of words that have taken tortuous paths from their beginnings to today’s usage.

Medical Words with Mythological Origins

Many of the medical terms we use have their origins in Greek or Roman mythology. We use words every day without thinking how psychiatry comes from Psyche, goddess of the human soul; why the element we call mercury was named for a Roman god; and the relationship of the goddess Aphrodite to the word aphrodisiac. Many more words—erotic, panic, atropine, sphincter, and syphilis—all have their origins in the legends traced to ancient Greeks and Romans.

Medical Words with Intriguing Origins

Many medical terms come to us from curious sources: from celestial influence, the length of the forearm, an unnamed artery, and a disease your friends diagnose. Words with intriguing origins include names of diseases, drugs, microorganisms, and antimicrobials. There are also medical euphemisms, terms introduced to avoid saying words like feces and gonorrhea. More recent additions to our lexicon are medical acronyms for syndromes such as PANDAS and for research study titles such as the ALaCaRT or the PROGRESS study.

Medical Words Linked to Places

Many medical terms come from places: towns, rivers, islands, forests, mountains, valleys, countries, and continents. These toponymous diseases, syndromes, descriptors, and other entities bring us colorful names that help us recall some of their history. Today we have Zika virus, its name coming from the Zika Forest in Ghana. Caucasian comes from the Caucasus Mountains, lesbian from the island of Lesbos, and Epsom salts from a mineral spring in Epsom, Surrey, England. Chapter 10.1007/978-3-319-50328-8_5 tells the stories behind these place-named diseases and how many of them affect us today.

Eponymous and Honorary Medical Terms

Many diseases, syndromes, and other entities carry the names of persons, real and fictional. As human anatomy was explored, and as the afflictions of humankind came to be understood, many discoveries were named for those who first described them: Pott disease, Hutchinson pupil, Virchow node, and Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease are just a few. Yet, eponyms have their detractors, citing duplicate names, and even instances in which an inappropriate person was honored. This chapter provides the history of some of medicine’s favorite eponyms, including some little-known backstories of how the naming occurred.

About Medical Words and Their Origins

Every medical word comes from somewhere, or someone, and few originated in the English language. Most of today’s medical terms trace their origins to ancient Greek and Latin. Only a few come from modern European or Asian languages. Words, even those we use in the clinic, have personalities. Some medical words, such as murmur, seem pleasant, almost euphonious; others such as grippe and scabies are ugly. Some medical words have status: Expectorate is more refined than spitting. This chapter presents an overview of medical word origins and how some of today’s medical terms began several millennia ago.