192 Medicine : 



and dazed by the prolific coinage of verbal mon- 

 strosities, acrid enough sometimes to set the teeth 

 on edge. Every cut which the surgeon makes is 

 a magniloquent ectomy or ostomy I No one does 

 so simple a thing as excise a uterus ; he performs 

 panhysterectomy. If he cuts into or cuts out a 

 stomach and duodenum it is a gastroduodenectomy, 

 and if he does this by a more skilful cut than 

 heretofore it is a gastropylodiiodencctomy. Then 

 there is a colpohysier ectomy, and, more mouth- 

 filling still, a panhysteromyomectomy, in which, if 

 I understand it, the myomectomy does not mean 

 to cut away muscle, but to cut out a myofibroma 

 in muscle ; and so on with a dacryocystorhinectomy 

 to cure a purulent dacryocystitis, a cholecystoduo- 

 denostomy and similar tongue-wrenching ectomics 

 or ostomies. Nor indeed is the physician at all 

 behind in the race of pitiful ambition. Medical 

 literature bristles with such terms as eosinophilia 

 for a dubiously characteristic blood state of 

 ankylostomiasis, myasthenia gravis, pseudoparalytic^!, 

 splcnomegalic polycythemia, pseudoleiikainia, gingi- 

 vitis, visceroptosis, and — latest jargon of medical 

 culture — poltophagic for one who chews his food, 

 psomophagic or tachyphagic for one who bolts it ; 

 for such is the inventive zeal that not the disease 

 only, but every symptom of it, is in a fair way to 

 get its uncouth name, offensive alike to eye, ear, 

 and mind. 



Obviously, if the rate of invention goes on at its 

 present pace, instead of mutual intelligence and 



