Some cool words I have come across thus far. I like the sound of them, or the imagery they bring up when you imagine the word. A disclaimer: the meaning of some of these words are conditions or treatments that are not very cool at all, particularly if you have them.
In no particular order:
- Radiation ablation therapy
- Caput medusa (literally, the Head of Medusa)
- Plethora
- Blastocystis hominis... and all other words that have "blast" in it, like blastoma, blastocyst
- Klebsiella (sounds like a nice name for a girl. Moraxella is not as cool-sounding, but reminds me of mozzarella cheese.)
- All words that start with oo: oocyte, oophorectomy, oophorohysterectomy... and the most awesome of all: oosome. Oosome is just so awesome.
- Succusian splash
- Murphy's Kidney Punch (the name of a diagnostic physical examination technique... for some reason makes me think of some Irish pub brawl.)
- Praecordial thump
- Thyroid storm
- Toxic megacolon
There were more on my mind when I was revising for my exams, but which has now left me.
Finally, I think the formidable Robbin's Textbook of Pathology deserves a special mention for its short but effective definition of dysentery: "Painful, explosive diarrhoea." The use of the word "explosive" cracks me up every time. Medicine is a production line of intellectuals with sarcastic (perhaps even cynical) dry wit, and this strange sense of humour often shows through in certain textbooks. One day I may create a small collection of some examples.
It's funny, I went shopping with some med friends the other day... and driving on the way to her house, I saw a big sign: Parkinson Learning Centre. Immediately I thought: "Parkinsonism..." At the shops, we were making comments like: "I really don't like this colour, reminds me of stearrhoea."
I guess you can take the person out of medicine but not medicine out of the person.
2 comments:
I couldn't stop lolling when you mentioned Klebsiella would be a nice girl's name!!!!!!!!! The funny thing is that I got reminded of your blog when I was trying to think of a way to remember Pasteuralla multocida (I keep forgetting the second part) and thought Sida.... and now I've procrastinated about 20 minutes away. Hope things are going better at wards!
What the heck is pasteuralla multocida, and why are you studying it? Arn't you in, like, 2nd year or something? I don't know if you have heard of the horses and zebras analogy, but pasteuralla multi-blahblah certainly sounds like a zebra to me.
Yeah wards are better - I'm on my surgery rotation at the moment and I actually really like the surgeons I work with (who would have thought!). They have a sense of humour like mine.
I'm honoured that someone is using my blog to procrastinate, especially since I havn't looked at it in such a long time. I'm returning the favour to say that I have a surgical case study due tomorrow and I, also, am procrastinating.
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