As last year, and previous years, my selected list of medical anniversaries in 2021, illustrated below, is restricted to multiples of 50 years (i.e. years ending in 21 and 71). […]
Jeff Aronson’s Words
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Medical mistletoe
In our recent survey of harms at Christmas, Robin Ferner and I did not discuss the harms that might arise from having seasonal plants in the vicinity, other than Christmas […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Massage and malaria
Three words reflecting two types of Chinese therapies can be found among the biomedical words first cited from 1979 in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (Table 1)—tui na, a form […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Calcium connections
Some of the biomedical words first cited from 1978 in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (Table 1) are connected with calcium—nimodipine, calmodulin, and alfacalcidol. Table 1. Biomedical words (n=28) in […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . The Munchausen family
Eponyms are not infrequently included in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and the list of biomedical words first cited from 1977 contains two, Pontiac fever and Polle syndrome (Table 1). […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Folk etymology
The list of words first recorded from 1976 in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED; Table 1) includes, unusually, an erroneous coinage. The words “inotropism”, “inotropic”, and “inotropy” all relate to […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . The “food of Paradise”
Among the words first recorded from 1975 in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED; Table 1) is “sinsemilla”, although it is also mentioned in Jerry Kamstra’s book Weed: Adventures of a […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Nobel prizes in pharmacology—James Black
The biomedical words whose earliest recorded written instances are dated 1974 in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) are listed in Table 1; as before, pharmacological words contribute the single largest […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Nobel prizes in pharmacology—John Vane
This week I have reached 1973 in my exploration of the biomedical words whose first known written instances have been listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in individual years […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . False positives and the Ulysses syndrome
Last week I listed the biomedical words whose first known written instances listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) date from 1971. This week I have explored 1972 (Table 1). […]