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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    the same kind as has already been a thousand times wrought,—then surely one must with open-eyed astonish¬ ment ask, Really, now, were you not born in Africa ? I wish again to emphasize the limitation that we do not advise one clean straight jump into phonetic spelling. We seem like some mothers,—the uglier and sicklier our orthographic child the more we love and cherish it. The maternal love is wise, but the other is mania. Turn to Germany and what do we find ? So far as phonetic writing is concerned their language was already marvelously per¬ fect, but because it was not entirely so, the Germans within a few years past have made it so. How is it with Germany as to science generally, and education, and espe¬ cially as to medical science ? The thousands of our young men sent to her laboratories is sufficient answer. Well, this nation, as I have said, in a few years, and at one sweep, has cut the Gordian knot of spelling, simplified and short¬ ened education thereby, and while we are squirming and making wry mouths over a few paltry and insignificant changes, she has wholly reformed the language that Goethe and Lessing wrote. One of my four kind critics once wrote me remonstra¬ ting, solely on the ground of euphony, against cutting the -al off the tail end of many adjectives ; “ he didn’t like it,” he said, “ it didn’t sound well.” He seemed wholly for¬ getful that the overlong tail of a thousand such words had already been lopped off, or perhaps had never grown out. In some countries the sheeps’ tails are so long that they hitch a tiny wagon to each animal, so that it hauls its caudal extremity instead of dragging it on the ground. Now the difference between these sheep and our medical Bo Peep al-pacas, is that the words grow no valuable wool on their tails, and that we trail them on the ground be¬ hind us as the ladies do their dress-trains. Sheep and words and ladies are alike in the one important respect that, in the poet’s immortal lines, if we let them alone they’ll surely come home, dragging their tails (and much else also) behind them.
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