Dehisce

Janet in Montgomery, Alabama, reports that a day after she had surgery on her hand, the wound burst open, and a doctor noted that her wound dehisced. She’s used to hearing dehisce used in botany to mean the splitting of a plant structure to release its contents. Dehisce derives from a Latin term that means “to gape” or “to yawn.” There are lots of similarly poetic medical terms. Tibia, Latin for “flute,” was applied to the similarly straight leg bone. The Latin term fulgur, which means “lightning,” produced fulguration or “cautery,” used to excise a tumor. Plethora, meaning “a multitude of things,” was originally a medical term referring to “an excess of blood or other bodily fluids.” Your biceps muscle, which has two parts, takes its name from Latin for “two-headed,” and the word muscle itself comes from Latin musculus, literally “little mouse,” a reference to a muscle’s resemblance to a little rodent twitching beneath the skin. This is part of a complete episode.