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Sample page 5 of A Dictionary of Medical Derivations
mala aria Italian, bad air
Francisco Torti, an Italian physician, coined the term in 1718 to name a fever he believed was contracted from the noxious fumes of the Pontine marshes near Rome, which even the ancient Romans had attempted to drain. In 1717, another Italian physician had suggested the transmitting agent might be a mosquito.
Malaria is a serious infectious disease, often recurrent, whose symptoms include chills, fever, and sweats: in that order as primary symptoms; then follow headache, anemia, muscle ache, and an enlarged spleen. It is caused by a protozoon parasitic in the blood of the Anopheles mosquito. Certain asexual reproductive stages of the protozoon occur in human red blood cells.
Prevention includes draining swamps where the mosquito breeds, avoiding bites by insecticides and mosquito netting, and taking antimalarial drugs like chlorquine, quinine, and pyrimethamine, if travel to malarial areas is planned.
The Roots Coll- and -Col
kolla Greek, glue
kolla Greek, glue + -gen making
Collagen is a fibrous protein in skin, bone, and connective tissue; its tiny fibrils combine to form the shiny, white fibres of tendons, ligaments, and fascia. In the days before synthetic glue manufacturing, the collagen in the bones and tissues of dead horses, cows, and pigs was extracted to make natural adhesive products. This is the origin of the old joke about carting someone "off to the glue factory."
kolla Greek, glue + -oid similar to, from Greek eides shape
A colloid is a thick substance that consists of particles dispersed throughout another substance. Smoke is a colloid of incombustible particulates suspended in air. Colloidal solutions and suspensions in water are used in medicine and sometimes found in disorders like colloid goitre, in which the follicles of the thyroid gland are swollen with colloid. To relieve some forms of dermatitic irritation and skin inflammation, a patient may be given a colloid water bath in which gelatin, bran, and starch are suspended.
Protocol
protos Greek, first + kolla glue
In medicine, a protocol is a detailed plan of treatment. In ancient times the first sheet of a papyrus was glued to the scroll. This protokollon or first glued sheet displayed the title and summary of the scroll contents. All other meanings, like diplomatic procedure and protocol's use in computerese, arise from this original sense of first glued sheet.
from the University of Illinois at Chicago
School of Biomed & Health Information Management.
caduceus Latin, the wand carried by a professional Roman messenger; as a medical symbol: a winged stick encircled by a snake or two snakes. Compare kerukeion, Greek, herald's wand < kerux, herald, messenger
When the Greeks created their messenger of the gods, Hermes and later the Romans created their equivalent, Mercury, they depicted them both wearing winged sandals and a winged hat to show their speed, and holding the caduceus, traditional sign of a herald who comes in peace to bring news.
But the stick encircled by the snake had been a symbol of magic healing in the ancient Near East for millennia. Long before Hermes was ever depicted carrying the messenger's rod, the same caduceus (with one snake) was the magic wand of pre-Hellenic healers from whom the cult of Asklepios arose. Among the ancient Greeks, Asklepios was revered as the founder of medicine and achieved divine status as the god of healing. So popular was he in ancient Greece that shrines were devoted to his worship where the sick or their relatives came, made an offering, and hoped for a specific cure to be revealed magically in dreams. Part of the ceremony in the chief temple of Asklepios at Epidaurus involved snakes kept by the attending priests.
In Greek mythology, the god Hermes is associated with the myth of Asklepios. Apollo sent Hermes to take the unborn Asklepios from his dying mother's womb. Hermes also conveyed the infant Asklepios to the centaur Cheiron who taught him the arts of healing and hunting. It was probably to remind their audience of this association that Greek artists began to show Hermes carrying Asklepios' caduceus. The Romans borrowed Asklepios as Aesculapius and much of the mumbo-jumbo, even the magic snake wand.
Mercury with his caduceus
on the Mantegna tarot card
The first systematic collection of practical medical knowledge is attributed by tradition to Hippocrates (B.C. 460-377), a real physician who travelled throughout ancient Greece and may have operated a school for doctors on the Aegean island of Kos.
The snake has been a worldwide symbol of healing, probably since the dawn of homo sapiens sapiens. The snake symbolizes fertility, rejuvenation (shedding its skin annually), keen sight, wisdom, and finally active health. The U.S. Army Medical Corps uses a two-snaked caduceus as its symbol. Their British equivalent, the Royal Army Medical Corps, uses a caduceus with one snake.
Hermes with his messenger's kerukeion
copied from a Greek vase painting
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