Last week, I reported my analysis of over 800 reports of drug shortages, published since the first report of shortages of quinine and mepacrine in India in 1942. In surveying […]
Jeff Aronson’s Words
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Explaining drug shortages
As I reported last week, drug shortages, recently in the news, are not new at all. They have been with us for many years, although they have certainly got worse […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Dystopic drug shortages
With my colleagues, Robin Ferner and Carl Heneghan, I recently contributed an editorial to The BMJ about drug shortages. Already online, it will appear in the print issue tomorrow (12 […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Enthymetic errors
As I reported last week, of about 60 words listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) beginning with thym-, only two refer to the mind, thymoleptic and thymopathy. However, there […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Thymoleptic thymopathies
Last week, exploring the origins and ramifications of the words “thyme”, the plant, and “thymus”, the gland, I noted that they probably came from different Greek words. The name of […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Thyme and thymus
Thyme (genus Thymus), is the name given to a range of plants, members of the Lamiaceae family. [In Greek λάμια means a gaping mouth, describing the shape of the flowers; […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Hormesis
Last week I discussed the different types of concentration-effect curves that R P (Steve) Stephenson reported in 1956, by using alkylated trimethylammonium salts to induce contractions in guinea-pig ileum in […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . A V Hill and concentration-effect curves
Last week I discussed the origins of the terms “dose-response curve” and “concentration-effect curve”, which are often used interchangeably. The pharmacologist Alfred Joseph Clark (1885–1941) was the first to observe […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Dose-response curves
Having started with Paracelsus’s observation that “only the dose determines that a thing is not a poison”, followed by discussions of chemical affinity and the Law of Mass Action, I […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . The Law of Mass Action
As I discussed two weeks ago, Paracelsus’s well-known statement, first published in his Sieben Defensiones in 1564, that “only the dose determines that a thing is not a poison” suggested, […]