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My brother, a doctor, alerted me to term they use in the medical profession, and I find its word formation fascinating: euboxic. It means that all of the medical stats look good, or textbook results. It can be used with or without ironic marking, referring to someone in good health, or to someone who is clearly not in good health, but where the typical tests reveal nothing remarkable. It can also be used to refer to a type of impersonal health management by the numbers.
He said that the term comes from the word box, plus the Greek eu- prefix for good and the adjective ending -ic. His explanation is that the forms on which the test results are returned to the doctors print the numbers in boxes, and the box part of euboxic refers to the boxes on the test results forms ([my note] And, by extension, to the numbers they contain).
So euboxic means the numbers are, so to speak, "within the boxes", ie within normal parameters? Like nominal, I guess. Many people think nominal means "very small" (ie "a nominal fee"); but in that context nominal means "in name only". For example, if you want a professional to do something for you and be bound by the ethics of his profession, you have to pay him. But you don't have to pay him very much; you just have to give him something of value. Give a lawyer one of the pens in your pocket, or a quarter perhaps, and if he accepts it then he's bound to keep secret whatever you tell him. The pen was a fee only technically—that's what "nominal" means—but it counts.
But in engineering, nominal means "according to name" in another sense: The flight of a rocket is nominal if it's keeping to the path that was named (ie "predicted") for it. It's in that sense that your euboxic reminds me of "nominal".
In the 1970s and/or 1980s, as I recall, a test called an "SMA-12" (which I believe stands for "Sequential Multiple Analysis-Twelve-Channel Biochemical Profile") was used to measure twelve common blood chemistries (glucose, calcium, &c.). The report page had twelve vertically oriented rectangles (one for each chemical measured), with values listed along the Y axis of each rectangle and with the normal range for each chemical designated by a cross-hatched "box"--a short vertical rectangle within (and as wide as) the larger vertical rectangle. The result of each chemical was indicated by a short horizontal line drawn across each larger vertical rectangle. If the level was too high, the line was drawn above the box; if the level was too low, the line was drawn below the box; but if the level was normal, the line was drawn within the box. Thus, someone who was "euboxic" had the line drawn within the normal-range box for each of the twelve chemicals measured. Narrowly, "euboxic" meant that the results of the SMA-12 were normal; but, by extension, "euboxic" could mean that the results of *all* of the patient's tests were normal. (Modern biochemical profiles simply render the levels as numbers--the reports no longer involve lines being drawn across boxes--and so younger physicians are less likely to be familiar with the term, or to know its origin even if they've heard of it.)
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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