Suggestions to medical writers / by George M. Gould.

  • George M. Gould
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Suggestions to medical writers / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    want the patient to know what we are prescribing ?” That is a confession a man would hardly make if he suspected its implications. Ethically it implies a desire or a need to bamboozle patients,—a method of treatment that is hardly flattering to our character, or to our ability to cure. If we need to do this, either our personal art or our scientific ability is as medieval as is our language. If we feel bound to humbug hysterics who will not have the good sense to get well or to die, we have thechemic names for drugs, and we can, as a friend of mine says he must do, keep a gallon of pink pellets of sugar of milk for distribution, with solemn directions as to taking. Most of the patients we try to deceive with Latin are sharp enough to find out what the words mean—if they can read the doctor’s handwriting—so there is nothing for it but to “ go the whole ourang,” as the Darwinian convert said. True medievalism, wherein such nonsense arose, was minded to do the business thoroughly, and devised a complete set of hieroglyphic signs for every drug. As modern science approached, these stupids slunk back again into their alchemic garrets and cloister-cellars, let us hope to die, unless some medieval-minded modern wants them, and will, more suo, galvanize them into life again. Let us vow that from this day we will write every prescription in frank open-hearted English ! The dead, wrinkled, dried ultramontane skin is not good science ; as written, it is certainly contemptible philology, and, Heaven help us ! it is not at all pretty ! And what a labor it has been to trundle it all the way from Rome to Chicago! Strange that it has not been utterly worn out ; but it is not more strange than the explanation that as in per¬ sonality so in language, the first and last creation of personality, the whole past somehow or other exists in the present. Every word and every letter bears the marks of at least 5000 years of history, and pathetically tells of its 5000 years of struggle with ignorance, preju¬ dice, and evil. But it as clearly points the way by evolution
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