ROOTS
Medical lingo
Deepti

THE medical profession is very fond of creating words based on existing words. New research reveals fresh data so new words modify limited information structures. For instance, hepato- means liver and the word hepatic was created to name a medicine for the liver. Almost all the medical affixes have been borrowed from Greek, with the exception of a Latin borrowing here and there, like denti-, meaning tooth.

Cysto- is a sac or bladder and goes on to create new words like cystitis meaning inflammation of the bladder, adding on –itis, that means a disease. The word cystoscope was coined in the same way, adding on skopeo, to look, in order to name the instrument that enables the doctor to examine the interior of the bladder. –Osis refers to a diseased or abnormal condition and is a fragment that goes on to create many new words. Words like neurosis, from neuron or nerve to refer to a disorder of the nervous system. It also gave psychosis, using psyche or mind to create a word for a disease of the mind. From thrombos or clot came thrombosis, the formation of a clot in the circulatory system. Halitos meaning breath gave the word halitosis or bad breath.

The Greek language is responsible for most medical terms, which is not surprising considering the Greek nationality of Hippocrates. The Greek rhea means a flowing or discharge and any flow from the body becomes easy to name. Dia or through gives diarrhea, gonos or generation gives gonorrhea and pyon or pus gives pyorrhea.

While the above will help in deciphering the doctor’s lingo, more words are constantly being added to the medical register in order to keep up with changing practices. In crowded hospitals, hallway medicine has become the need of the time. This is the practice of leaving patients on gurneys in hallways during all or most of their hospital stay because there are no available rooms in wards, something that we’re all getting used to, especially in the Emergency. In over-populated countries, in managed health care nurses attend to a greater number of patients and attempt to speed those patients through the system by performing tasks—such as drawing blood—previously assigned to specialists; this is termed hit and run nursing or accelerated-care nursing.

With premature births becoming common and treatable, tender and loving care in the shape of kangaroo care has taken over. This is neonatal care in which a premature baby is held on the chest of the caregiver with skin-to-skin contact. Kangaroo care came into being as it was felt that premature babies, isolated in a separate ward or under an oxygen tent, suffer due to lack of human contact. In the 1980s, doctors in Columbia began taking the opposite approach and allowed mothers to tuck their premature newborns under their clothing and hold them twenty-four hours a day. This arrangement looked just like a baby kangaroo tucked inside its mother's pouch, giving birth to the phrase kangaroo care.

Tap-root

Hindi has separate words for the various kinds of doctor: a vaid is an ayurveda physician, a hakim is a unani one and a daktar is an allopathic one. In Sanskrit, vaid originally meant any learned person but when more and more learned people became ayurveda physicians and Hindi borrowed the word vaid, it became restricted in meaning, limited to an ayurveda physician. Doctor is clearly borrowed and adapted from English and made restricted in meaning.

This feature was published on November 8, 2003