Medical terminology allows you to convey the greatest quantity of information, with the least confusion and most precision, to anyone in the world. For example, saying someone has a badly broken wrist doesn’t convey as much as saying someone has a Salter-Harris II fracture of the right distal radius with moderate lateral displacement and 28 degrees of anterior angulation. Now who’s the coolest kid in the clinic?
In theory and practice
You don’t need prior knowledge of Greek and Latin or anatomy and physiology to build a medical vocabulary. But you do need to master the fundamentals, or the ABCs, so to speak, to be comfortable and confident with medical terminology.
Mastering medical terms is much easier than you think. It is certainly easier than acquiring a whole new language from scratch. New terms become easier once you know the reasoning behind most medical terms. Many terms are made up of interchangeable parts, used over and over again, in different combinations. Once you understand this, you will be well on your way to translating even the toughest medical terms – including terms you have never heard or seen before.
Writing it down
One thing that gives some people pause with medical terminology is spelling the words correctly. Again, defer to the rule of breaking down the word into parts. If you can spell each small prefix, root, or suffix and put them all together, then you can spell medical terms with ease.
Whether you are a list maker or prefer to draw maps, there is a way for you to incorporate writing terms as spelling and word-recognition practice. Some useful ideas for writing and recalling terms are
✔ Make lists of similar prefixes, roots, and suffixes based on what body system they are associated with.
✔ Make lists of prefixes, suffixes, and roots based on some other memorable moniker, such as sound similarity or similar meaning.
✔ Draw simple maps of each system and label body part terms.
✔ Use your body system map to identify diseases affecting each specific part. You can also use this technique to identify locations of specific procedures.
Changes in Medical Terminology
Medical language is an entity unto itself and followed a historical development. Common medical vocabulary used today includes terms built from Greek and Latin word parts, some of which were used by Hippocrates and Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago.
With the great advancements in medicine throughout the 20th century, medical language changed with the times and continues to do so today. Some words are discarded or considered obsolete, whereas others are changed, and new words are continually added.
Building on guidance from the Greek and Latin origins, medical terms began to be professionalized in the mid-1800s. Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary was first published in 1890 as the American Illustrated Medical Dictionary, consisting of 770 pages, over 50 years after the first edition of Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language. Dr. William Alexander Dorland was the editor, and when he died in 1956 the dictionaries were renamed to include his name, thus they are known today as Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary. Electronic medical publishing took off during the 1980s thanks to advancements in database publishing and electronic storage. In the mid-1990s, medical dictionaries – most notably from Dorland’s, Stedman’s, and Taber’s – became available in electronic form with many various editions and publications available on disk, CD-ROM, and via Internet downloading. Check out Chapter 24 for a list of great resources.
It’s Greek and Latin to Me
You can thank the two founding fathers of medical terminology for getting the ball rolling: Hippocrates and Aristotle. Hippocrates, considered the father of medicine, was a student, teacher, and great physician. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and a physical scientist. He stressed observation and induction. His major studies were of comparative anatomy and physiology.
The Greeks were the founders of modern medicine, but Latin is the basic source of medical terms. With origins in ancient Rome and thanks to good, old-fashioned conquest, Latin quickly made its way through the world, solidifying its rep as the language of choice for medicine and science. Approximately 75 percent of all medical terms are based on Latin or Greek terms, even though modern-day changes are made to make the terms more comprehensive.
Look no further than the study of etymology to help you crack the code of medical terms. Etymology indicates the origin and historical development of a term. Some examples of etymology, or word history, include
✔ Words with Latin origins: Femur, for example, is a Latin term referring to a bone in the leg.
✔ Words with Greek origins: Hemorrhage, for example, is a word with Greek origin indicating a rapid, uncontrollable loss of blood.
✔ Eponyms: Words named after people, such as Parkinson’s disease.
✔ Acronyms: These are modern language terms that stand for longer phrases such as laser, which stands for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.”
Etymologies were listed in early medical dictionaries, assuming the reader had studied languages and could read Greek or Latin. But gradually the Greek alphabet was cast aside when it was later recognized that few, aside from specialists, were actually studying ancient Greek.
Modernizing Medicine
With the advent of the medical dictionary, terminology came to the masses with full force. Today, medical terminology has evolved into modern applications from basic anatomy to include alternative, holistic, naturopathic, and complementary
