The Morristown gazette. [volume] (Morristown, Tenn.) 1867-1920, 1881-09-14
A Little Latin.

An effort is being made to induce doc
tors to stop writing their prescriptions In
Latin and use United States language.
So many inoffensive sick people have
been killed by druggist putting up
IobeIia and other dangerous drugs in
place of some mild and gentle purgative,
which the system requires at this time OF
year, on the Latin prescription of aphys-
ician, that a society at the East threaten
to take the law into their own hands and
put stop to it. As a usual thing the
physician who graduates with high hon
Ors at some high toned mOrgue, does not
know any more about the common Eng
lish branches than is good for him, and
his handwriting is the merest goose
tracks. a sort of delirium tremens on pa
per. Now, when you come to put such
writing as that into Latin, to be read by
a sleepy prescription clerk who has been
routed out of bed at midnight in his
shirt sleeves, there can only be one result.
The patient Will be worse the next day.
A sleepy drug clerk IS only human, and
when he strikes one of those ingredients IN
the prescription where it tells him to put
up thee saw-teeth of pOdOphYlElL7l1, and
the word looks more like pennyroyal
than it does like 400d0phyLLll7l, and
more ike peppermint than like either
one of them, ne is liable to trust good
deal to luck and put In that which is the
least injurious. No drug clerk cares to
lose a good position by not being able to
read a stroke Of lightning, and the result
is he puts up something, and then
charges enough more to make up for
what he doesn't know. There are forty
nine millions of people IN this country,
whose lives to g greater or less extent
rest on prescription clerks, and the east
ern society who have flung their banner
to the breeze and sounded the death of
the dead languages will be embaImed in
the hearts of grateful posterity. They
are doing noble worpk. Dead languages
are all well enough for dead people, but
they are eninently out Of place in this
age of animated things. OF course the
Topping off of the excrescence viii bring
doctors down to o level with ordinary
mortals, and they viii have to take their
chances It may be claimed by the doc
tors that they will be unable to command
the respect and confidence of the COM
munity, If their remedies and things are
mot locked up in Latin. We will sup
pose that a man has eaten hearty meal
of arsenic, and he begins to feel distress
at the stomach. A doctor is sent for and
he comes and prescribes. A few min
utes later another doctor comes {when a
man has been poisoned every doctor
within ten miles is sent for). The last
doctor asks the first one what he has
given the man, and the first doctor an
swers that he has prescribed "bgcIrGt6d
SeSQui-oride feJTU37 The second
studiesa moment, with his finger to bis
forehead, and says he approves of the
remedy, and the friends OF the patients
feel that ne would be fool if he didn't,
as the name Is nearly two inches long.
Well, the hYIrGted ScSgUj-OCjde Of fer
7zt22 is nothing but iron rust, such as can
be scraped off of old nails, but if the doc
tor had told his brother professional that
he was giving the patient iron rust, and
the other physician had approved of it,
the probability Is that the patients
friends would have bounced both doctors
and sent for one that knew something.
Doctors have everything to contend
against, not only the ignorance Of their
patients and the patients friends, bnt
their own as well. 1t is estimated that
two-thirds of d college course Is devoted
to learning the Latin names and applying
them, ana the other third to the study of
how to cure people. The percentage is
too great. bat pLysicial must under
stand all the technical terms, as he Is la
bic to be called as a witness III s. court
sometime md if he should use any term
that the Jury conld understand there
is 10 telling what the consequences
might be.-P6ck'S dfita0GJtkee Stt1e.