PREFACE 



Nothing so well illustrates the astonishing vitality and progress of present-day medical 

 science as its unparalleled multiplication of new words. It is only ten years since I made what 

 «emed then a thorough gathering of such new coinages and incorporated them in the 

 • Illustrated Dictionary of Medicine, Biology, and Allied Sciences." It seemed at that time as 

 f, for the most part, the possible phasings and discoveries of pathologic and physiologic 

 onditions must have been made and designated with names. Since then I. have kept an 

 •ye — and through friends and helpers, many eyes — upon the busy minting still proceeding 

 inabated. That in a decade over 30,000 new terms should have been devised is almost 

 ncredible. It is doubtful if any other science or object of study has ever shown such 

 1 phenomenon. 



mina si nescis perit cognitio rerum, said Coke with the acumen of the legal mind, and it 

 . jnerally true that the knowledge of things depends upon the knowledge of their names. 



overies of new facts, or new standpoints for viewing old facts, demand new tags or 



:king " symbols whereby their status may be fixed and their recognition insured and made 

 nore clear for distant or future students. Few philosophic and scientific minds may exhibit an 



mess and a freedom from the tyranny of words to enable them to study things without the 



of words and namings. But nothing, it is admitted, is more blundering in a personal 

 -e, and more harmful to the progress of science, than the exhaustion of interest so soon as a 



-ncation and nomenclature have been made. The ridiculous is only needed to end in the 

 ibsurd, and this is generally supplied by their wrong pigeon-holing and false ticketing. A diag- 



- once made, a mere word, long, mysterious, and meaningless, pinned. upon the bunched 

 ymptoms, and further study of etiology, prophylaxis, or therapeutics is with too many at an end. 



r 200 years ago Dr. South tried to check this "fetal imposture and force of words" by 



Mwing how " the generality of mankind is governed by words and names," not by things as 

 f are, but as they are called — in a word, by ' ' verbal magic. ' ' 

 And yet in a groping science like medicine, one that inductively, slowly, and tenatively is 

 eeling its way towards the truth, this need of naming every step forward is peculiarly 

 essary. It is the condition of securing the step in itself, and of guiding the aftercomers. It 

 5 the blazing of trails into the wilderness of the unknown. Closure may consequently be called 

 ! Jpon the critic who may say that half the new words, or more, are the marks of trails which lead 

 lowhither, and that have been abandoned before they can be sketched. Of course no one can 

 ell what lines of research may finally prove the best and tme, and none, therefore, what blazes 

 nil be useful or useless. New trails, shorter, easier, and better, may indeed be discovered, and 

 vhen the wilderness country is settled, all trails will either be abandoned or become well-known 

 °ads. But even then good sign-posts and pointing index-fingers will be helpful for strangers, and 

 ■orae of the old names will never be discarded. None can foretell what words may die and what 

 )nes become a part of the language. Hence neither by guess nor by judgment may the 

 1 exicographer too recklessly exclude. He is moreover a contemporary historian, and must 



