{"id":48778,"date":"2020-10-09T18:58:10","date_gmt":"2020-10-09T17:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=48778"},"modified":"2020-11-16T21:10:55","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T20:10:55","slug":"jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-fifty-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/10\/09\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-fifty-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Fifty years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Writing <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/10\/02\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-planning\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">last week<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> about the impossibility of planning without including elements of flexibility designed to account for unforeseen contingencies, I was reminded of what Nassim Taleb wrote in his book <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Black Swan<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (Random House, 2007): \u201chistory does not crawl, it jumps\u201d. Many important discoveries do not come about by careful planning; they arise suddenly and surprisingly, like the discovery of a black swan when everyone believes that all swans are white. But when a surprising discovery is made it often immediately becomes obvious retrospectively and in time becomes commonplace. \u201cLook into your own personal life,\u201d writes Taleb, \u201cto your choice of profession, say \u2026. How often did [significant events, technological changes, and inventions] occur according to plan?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Accepting this challenge, I am approaching it by charting the biomedical words that have entered the English language since I began medical practice in September 1970, 50 years ago. My source is the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oxford English Dictionary<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">OED<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">). Conclusions will come only when I have completed the survey.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">OED<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> not only defines words. It gives variant spellings, etymologies, and instances of their uses in quotations from printed texts. And it does so, as the original rubric had it, \u201con historical principles\u201d. For each word it gives the earliest example of its use that the lexicographers have found. However, sometimes an earlier instance, an antedating, can be found. The editor of the first edition, James Murray, estimated that about three quarters of its headwords could be antedated. He also pointed out, in a presidential lecture to the Philological Society in 1884, that words are generally spoken before they are written down, so that written sources will generally postdate the date of invention or introduction of a word.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nevertheless, the dates given in the dictionary are generally not too far off; major antedatings are uncommon. When I <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/01\/10\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-lexicographic-anniversaries-in-2020\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">surveyed<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> 466 words whose first instances listed in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">OED<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> are dated 1920, I<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> found <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">31 biomedical words and only three minor antedatings\u2014\u201clymphadenopathy\u201d (1915), \u201cembolized\u201d (1907), and \u201cspermiogenesis\u201d (1912). There was one striking antedating, of \u201cpremedication\u201d to 1849, but I wasn&#8217;t able to inspect the original source to determine how the word had been used and couldn\u2019t be sure that it meant then what it means now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let\u2019s start with 1970. The <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">OED<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> lists 389 words that were newly cited in 1970, 61 of them biomedical (Table 1). Of these, 19 (31%) are the names of medicines, most of which are still in use; 18 are various biochemical terms and five are the names of viruses, largely unheard of by non-specialists. I have found 10 antedatings; most of them are minor, but \u201cmedicalized\u201d can be antedated by 57 years, which is striking.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Table 1.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Biomedical words (n=61) in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">OED<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for which the earliest citations are from 1970; there are 10 *antedatings from 1 to 57 years; 389 words in all are first cited from that year<\/span><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-49049 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_fifty_again.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"602\" height=\"590\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_fifty_again.jpg 602w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_fifty_again-300x294.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 602px) 100vw, 602px\" \/><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">*Antedatings: ancrod (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/4\/5684\/671\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1969<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">); junkiedom (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.2307\/community.28035870\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1968<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">); metabolizer (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/2406271\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1962<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">); neuraminate (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/1604815\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1966<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">); nitrosated (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/1678025\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1950<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">); Lassa fever\/virus (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/44071431\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1969<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">); medicalized (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/2\/2745\/290\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1913<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">); medicalization (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/799151\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1967<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">); myoelectrical (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/3951015\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1966<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">); pinocytize (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC2107446\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1968<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">The extent of activity during this time is also reflected in the numbers of advertisements for medicinal products, including psychiatric products, that appeared in <em>The BMJ<\/em> (Table 2).<\/span>The presence of so many new medicines in the list is not surprising. This was a time of great pharmacological productivity. Nor is it surprising that so many of them are centrally-acting drugs, eight in all. Until about 1950, there were few clinically efficacious pharmaceutical products. Drugs such as the sulphonamides, opiates, barbiturates, and phenytoin were readily available, but relatively little else, other than various over-the-counter medicines such as antacids to treat gastric ulcers and a range of largely ineffective <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/20008435\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">patent medicines<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. However, from the 1950s there was an explosion of novel drugs for a wide spectrum of illnesses, particularly during the 1960s and then again starting in the 1980s (Figure 1). Many of these compounds were marketed with minimal preclinical investigation, let alone proper clinical evaluation, including double-masked studies. This reflects the methods of drug development and regulation at that time, which gradually changed in the UK after the advent of the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2018\/09\/28\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-medicine-medicines-and-the-medicines-act-1968\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1968 Medicines Act<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, as we shall see, antimicrobial drugs featured even more prominently over this time. There are four of those in the 1970 list.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Table 2.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Numbers of pharmaceutical products advertised in <em>The BMJ<\/em> from 1950 to 1980 and the numbers and percentages of psychiatric products (from <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/30251594\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Green et al., 2018<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020_2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-48780 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"674\" height=\"290\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020_2.jpg 674w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020_2-300x129.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020_2-640x275.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 674px) 100vw, 674px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-48779 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"725\" height=\"279\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020.jpg 725w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020-300x115.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020-640x246.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 725px) 100vw, 725px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Figure 1.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Numbers of FDA-approved new molecular entities, 1930\u20132013 (data from <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/24680947\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kinch et al., 2014<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">); left\u2014year by year; right\u2014cumulative numbers<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Jeffrey Aronson<\/strong>\u00a0is a clinical pharmacologist, working in the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford\u2019s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. He is also president emeritus of the British Pharmacological Society.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Competing interests:<\/strong>\u00a0None declared.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020_3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-48781 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020_3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"706\" height=\"1094\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020_3.jpg 706w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020_3-194x300.jpg 194w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020_3-661x1024.jpg 661w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2020\/10\/aronson_9_oct_2020_3-640x992.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 706px) 100vw, 706px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Writing last week about the impossibility of planning without including elements of flexibility designed to account for unforeseen contingencies, I was reminded of what Nassim Taleb wrote in his book [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/10\/09\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-fifty-years\/\">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-48778","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 v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . 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