Very interesting. Hope you plan to continue these
lectures. Perhaps Greek 102 next time. Seriously
though, we all need to be informed and educated
consumers in today's health care marketplace.
Carole H.
--- "J. R. Bruman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Greek To Me
> August 1999
> Frequently, patients urgently seeking information
> from the
> medical literature are put off by the big strange
> words. But it
> really isn't all that difficult. Doctors seem to
> favor those
> words, even when an English synonym is available,
> for a variety
> of reasons: Conciseness, precision (many common
> English words
> have become too ambiguous), and tradition. Up to
> about the mid-
> 1700s, formal schooling was a privilege of the
> well-to-do, and
> because of its rarity, textbooks generally were
> printed in Latin
> or Greek, to be independent of the many local
> languages such as
> French, German, Italian, Swedish, Danish, etc.
> Modern doctors
> often maintain the tradition when a new word is
> needed, so that
> it will carry a hint of meaning to readers of many
> nationalities.
> And with a little digging in the dictionary, such
> words can be
> broken into parts and understood even by non-medical
> readers.
>
> For example, the name of the ubiquitous PD drug
> Sinemet is a
> combination of the Latin "sine" (=not, without) and
> the Greek
> "emet" (=sickness, as in English "emetic" or
> "emesis"). That's
> easy, but what about a word like "rhabdomyolysis" as
> mentioned
> in the official description of tolcapone (Tasmar)?
> Well, "rhabdo"
> is Greek for rod, or rod-like; "myo" is Greek for
> muscle; and
> "lysis" is Greek for disintegration or dissolution.
> The term
> refers to sudden and severe destruction of skeletal
> (as opposed
> to heart, gut, etc.) muscle, thought by the Tasmar
> writers to be
> related to neuroleptic malignant syndrome, since it
> appeared with
> other symptoms in several trial subjects who
> abruptly stopped
> taking Tasmar, and killed at least one of them. And
> one of the
> signs of rhabdomyolysis (and neuroleptic malignant
> syndrome) is
> the elevation of myoglobulin, a protein component of
> muscle
> tissue, in the blood or urine. What's myoglobulin,
> you ask?
> Well, "myo" = muscle, again, and "globulin" refers
> to the little
> microscopic globules formed by any of several
> proteins that are
> insoluble in water. Myoglobulin is released when the
> muscle
> tissue containing it is destroyed. See how easy it
> is? And, see
> how valuable it can be to decipher those big words?
> When you
> have done this for a while, you see the same root
> forms recurring
> in other words, which you can take apart in the same
> way.
>
> Doctors aren't generally interested in or renowned
> for skill in
> linguistics, so sometimes the system doesn't work.
> "Neuroleptic"
> is a case in point. It is of course a combination of
> the Greek
> "neuro" (= nerve, nervous system) and "lept-" (=
> sieze, grab
> hold of); but the term seems to be reserved only for
> drugs that
> _improve_ the user's mental state, i.e.,
> antipsychotic drugs.
> What about drugs having a different use, but which
> may _degrade_
> the user's mental state, i.e., cause psychotic
> symptoms? Some
> examples are levodopa, and numerous others commonly
> used to
> treat PD. Well, those aren't strictly "neuroleptics"
> and the
> word creators haven't provided a good substitute
> term. This is
> unfortunate, because both classes of drugs share the
> important
> feature that on rare occasion, abrupt withdrawal of
> either one
> may cause a life-threatening syndrome that includes
> multiple
> autonomic failure. Authors in the PDR and elsewhere
> tend to blur
> the distinction by calling syndromes "like", but not
> identical
> to, neuroleptic malignant syndrome. Not a very good
> situation.
> Cheers,
> Joe
>
> J. R. Bruman (818) 789-3694
> 3527 Cody Road
> Sherman Oaks, CA 91403-5013
>
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