The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-11-08
SESQUIPEDALIAN DISPLAYS

The "sesquipedalian' disease has firm
hold. Big words grow-increase.
Words of learned length and thunder
ing sound" to quote Goldsmith, reach
now the "ears of the groundiings," Inc
it is seen often how a little learning
is a dangerous thing Medical techni-
calities are enormous. When we glance
at the names of the multiplying new
medicines it strikes US that it is impos-
sible to easily recall the names, much
less to understand their uses. Scien-
tific nomenclature groweth and widen
eth and astoundeth. We saw four years
ago in a newspaper how a Chicago med
ical professor had been showing UP the
six-syllabled words OF the doctors. DR..
Edmund Andrews said:
81. is amusing and yet vexatious to
see a worthy medical gentleman, whose
ordinary conversation Is IL a simple
and good style, suddenly swell up when
he writes a medical article. He changes
his whole dialect and fills his pages
with 3 5angle of harsh technical terms,
not one-third of which is necessary to
express his meaning"
We were amused over some of his
illustrations. We give a few that will
probably interest the doctors as well
as unprofessionals. We copy:
Another writer wanted to say that
cancer is an unnatural growth Of epithe-
lium He took a big breath and spout
ed the following: Carcinoma arises
from any subepithelial proliferation by
which cpithelial cells are isolated and
made to grow abnormally.' Now, then.
| you know all about cancer.
"A writer on insanity Eliminates the
subject as follows: The prodromic
delirium is a quaSi-paranoiac psychosis
in a degenerate subject. A psychosis
Of exhaustion, being practically a condi-
ton Of syncope.' The following is an
effort to say that certain microbes pro-
duce the poison of erysipelas: The
streptococcus erysipalatosus proliferat-
ing in the in~terspaces of the connective
tissue is the etiologic factor in the Sc
erection of the erys~ipelatious toxins
A large cancer of the liver was found
as a pCst-mortem examination and re-
ported about as follows: A colossal
~carcinGnlatous degeneration of the he
patio mechanism"
effort of a doctor to describe to a father
the breaking of a leg of his son He
put it with marvellous lucidity and fe-
licity: 1.-The patient was projected
t~ransversely from his vehicle, fractur-
ing the tibia and fibula and luXating
the tibiotarsal articulation"
This reminds US of n traditional tutor
of the University OF North Carolina
some sixty years aGO. He was schol-
arly and worthy but pompous. He was
telling a faculty meeting of how he was
awakened in the night by rather an
unearthly racket. In IL effort to dis
cover the guilty ones he had a fall while
running in the in the campus.
So far as We a recall the report, it
ran thus: LAS I was reclining in my
celia ~cerulis, the harsh and d~iscordant
sound OF the college tocsin ~reverberated
rudely upon the timpinum Of my auricu-
lar appendage. I arose from my re-
cumbahcy and rushed forward, and by
a rapid n precepitate succession o:
descending graduation. I q I length
reached the campus hidden by noctur-
nal obsruities and shades. When myra
quickly accelated pedal extremities
coming IN sudden and unanticipated
contact with an excrescence of nature,
I stumbled and fell irreSistihly prone
| Upon alma water" Here the bell wa
rung by President Swain and the cur
tain fell upon the scene. The profess
sors departed in as good order as pos
sible. some Of the old students may be
able I'd improve upon tnis version.