{"id":46698,"date":"2020-02-21T17:55:07","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T16:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=46698"},"modified":"2020-02-28T18:08:56","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T17:08:56","slug":"jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-anamnesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/02\/21\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-anamnesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Anamnesis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2014\/12\/jeffrey_aronson.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-32935\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2014\/12\/jeffrey_aronson.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"127\" height=\"160\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/02\/14\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-painkillers-a-linguistics-based-approach\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last week<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I referred to Noam Chomsky\u2019s theory of a universal grammar and Stephen Pinker\u2019s account of the idea that our ability to use language is instinctive and innate. This is reminiscent of the Platonic theory of anamnesis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The English word anamnesis is a direct transliteration of the Greek noun <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u1f00\u03bd\u03ac\u03bc\u03bd\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2, remembrance, which is from the verb \u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03bc\u03b9\u03bc\u03bd\u03ae\u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd, to remind or remember, and therefore to mention. When preceded by \u03c0\u03b1\u03bb\u1f77\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03bf\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2, recurring, it referred to the phases of the moon. And \u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03bc\u03b9\u03bc\u03bd\u03ae\u03c3\u03ba\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd \u03bd\u03bf\u03c3\u03ae\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2, literally to recall a disease, meant to have a relapse.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Plato\u2019s dialogues \u1f00\u03bd\u03ac\u03bc\u03bd\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 is<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the idea that humans are born with innate knowledge, rediscovery of which occurs during inquiry and learning. In the dialogue called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meno<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, dealing with virtue, Socrates asserts that knowledge is not required for virtue and that there is a distinction between belief and knowledge. In <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Phaedo<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which ends with an account of the death of Socrates, Plato\/Socrates uses the theory as one of four arguments that the soul is immortal:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the theory of recollection, \u1f00\u03bd\u03ac\u03bc\u03bd\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2, which implies that the soul existed before birth to carry the knowledge that learning recollects;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the cyclical or opposites argument, that since the soul always brings life, it cannot die;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the affinity argument, that invisible, incorporeal, immortal things (e.g. the soul) are different from visible, corporeal, mortal ones (e.g. the body);<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the final argument, that because the soul is part of life, it can never die.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Later, anamnesis came to refer to an individual\u2019s medical history, a meaning not listed in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">OED<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which, doing scant justice to the word, gives only two definitions:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the recalling of things past; recollection, reminiscence;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">that part of the Eucharistic canon in which the sacrifice of Christ is recalled and pleaded.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, as my colleague Robin Ferner noted when we discussed the word, the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">OED<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> includes a quote from 1876, under the first definition: \u201cDiagnosis from the Anamnesis, that is, from the story which the patient tells of his illness\u201d. This is a translation, by J Van Duyn and EC Seguin of a passage from the 6<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> German edition of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Manual of General Pathology<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by EL Wagner, Professor of General Pathology and Pathological Anatomy in Leipzig. Robin also pointed out that foreign dictionaries define anamnesis as the patient\u2019s history, as does Oxford\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lexico.com\/en\/definition\/anamnesis\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lexico<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and many other English language dictionaries, such as <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/anamnesis\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Merriam-Webster<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-46700 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/aronson_anamnesis.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"374\" height=\"436\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/aronson_anamnesis.jpg 374w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/aronson_anamnesis-257x300.jpg 257w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 374px) 100vw, 374px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The fact that \u201canamnesis\u201d specifically means an individual\u2019s medical history, and not merely any recollection, deserves separate notice. And the 1876 citation in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">OED<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that illustrates this meaning can be antedated by over 100 years (Table 1).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-46703 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/aronson_anamnesis_table.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"685\" height=\"1050\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/aronson_anamnesis_table.png 685w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/aronson_anamnesis_table-196x300.png 196w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/aronson_anamnesis_table-668x1024.png 668w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/aronson_anamnesis_table-640x981.png 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 685px) 100vw, 685px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The earliest instance that I have found, from 1773, is from an English translation of Herman Boerhaave\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Aphorismi de Cognoscendis et Curandis Morbis<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (1709).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then there are several early 19<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> century instances, from <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Miscellanies on Homoeopathy<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (1839) and in two articles by Dr Thomas Laycock in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">London Medical Gazette<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> of 1846, of which I have cited four examples.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The reviewer of Dr A Siebert\u2019s text, a translation of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Technik der Medicinischen Diagnostik,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> which comes between Laycock\u2019s papers, defines \u201canamnesis\u201d in a footnote as \u201cthe retrospective examination of a patient, involving all the facts connected with his physical and moral condition before he comes under treatment.\u201d Elsewhere, it is clear that by \u201cexamination\u201d he means taking the history. He also adds \u201cWithout the aid of Kraus&#8217;s Lexicon it would be impossible to divine the meaning of one half of the professional terms now in use among our German brethren.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">PubMed currently lists eight papers with both \u201canamnesis\u201d and \u201chistory\u201d in the titles; seven are in foreign languages (four German, one each French, Spanish, and Danish); only <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/3640726\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">one<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is in English. Looking for the two words as text words yields just over 1000 hits, of which about half are in foreign languages, about half of those in German. All this suggests that the meaning came to England via the Continent, in translations from either Latin or German texts. The pre-1773 instances that I have found are mostly in either Latin or German; if in English, they typically refer to a genus of scarab beetles called Anamnesis or to Aristotle\u2019s theory of anamnesis, defined in George Crabb&#8217;s Universal Technological Dictionary (1823) as &#8220;[in rhetoric] an enumeration of the things treated of before, &#8230; a sort of recapitulation&#8221;.\u200b<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><em><strong>Jeffrey Aronson<\/strong>\u00a0is a clinical pharmacologist, working in the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford&#8217;s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. He is also president emeritus of the British Pharmacological Society.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Competing interests:<\/strong> None declared.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-46706 size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/aronson_integer262.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"689\" height=\"921\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/aronson_integer262.png 689w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/aronson_integer262-224x300.png 224w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/02\/aronson_integer262-640x856.png 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 689px) 100vw, 689px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I referred to Noam Chomsky\u2019s theory of a universal grammar and Stephen Pinker\u2019s account of the idea that our ability to use language is instinctive and innate. This [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/02\/21\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-anamnesis\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5762],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jeff-aronsons-words"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . 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