UNDERSTANDING THE LANGUAGE OF MEDICINE

UNIT TWO

Characteristics of Medical Terms

To understand the development of medical language, it helps to view it in the light of the history of Medicine. A great many of the medical terms used today originated in antiquity and were introduced by Greek or Latin speaking men of learning. Not all of them were physicians - philosophers, mathematicians and other men of letters and arts also pursued their interests in matters of health and disease. They sought to determine what contributed to a healthy body and how this body was constructed. They described their observations and conclusions in the language they ordinarily used, Greek or Latin, and their descriptive words became medical terms.

Most of these terms reveal astute observations and are quite meaningful if you understand what they are saying. However, we also encounter medical terms that reveal traces of earlier misconceptions. In the perspective of our knowledge today, some terms appear inappropriately constructed. Yet they have survived in usage, and are by tradition still part of our medical vocabulary today. As a student of medical terminology you may find the use of these misnomers confusing, unless you see them as linguistic "fossils", reminding us of the long and tortuous path of medical progress in ancient and medieval times.

Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages it was not permitted to dissect a human body after death for any reason. Therefore descriptions of human anatomy and physiology were based on observations made during animal dissections and experiments with animals. The aid of microscopes was not available for the study of dissected organs and their tissues, since in the Western world, the microscope was invented only in the 16th century. It is therefore not surprising that in antiquity many false assumptions were made, recorded and passed on as valid doctrines and that to some extent they are reflected in "pitfalls" coining medical terms at the time..

Thus some tissues were given identical names, although they really are different and even belong to different body systems: Two Greek words "myelos" (marrow) and "neuron" (nerve), as well as terms derived from them will illustrate this: The word element "myel-" is used not only for "bone marrow", but also for "spinal cord" - two quite different tissues, but once thought to be composed of similar matter, being of soft consistency and enclosed in bone.

To correctly interpret a term derived from the word element "myel-" you always have to consider it in the proper context. The term "osteomyelitis" should always be translated as "infection of bone and bone marrow" ("osteo-" = bone, and "myel-" = in this case "bone marrow", because "osteo-" indicates a relationship to bone, and the suffix "-itis" means "infection" or "inflammation").

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