A Dallas caller asked whether the grainy stuff that collects in the corners of your eyes overnight goes by different names in different families or regions. The medical term is rheum, from Greek for “to flow,” but many people prefer sleepy sand, eye...
Vaccines take their name from vaccinia, the virus that caused cowpox. It was the original ingredient used to vaccinate people against smallpox. Stefan Riedel, a pathologist at the Baylor University Medical Center, offers a detailed history of the...
Gronk the data, heard by Chris in San Diego in the medical-device business, is probably a mishearing of grok, the verb meaning to understand deeply. Robert A. Heinlein coined grok in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, and it later became...
A medical transcriptionist who majored in English reports that her co-workers are squabbling over a sentence: “The patient was brought to the operating room, and laid supine on the operating-room table.” This is part of a complete...
Susan, a nursing student in Madison, Wisconsin, asks why medical shorthand uses GTTS to mean “drops” or “drips,” as in medication given by drip. The abbreviation comes from Latin gutta, “drop,” with the vowels removed and an English plural -s added...
retrospectoscope n.— «The view through scopes—colonoscopes, arthroscopes and laparoscopes, to name a few—routinely aids physicians in narrowing diagnoses and arriving at a plan of care. But none is as illuminating as the one doctors refer...
