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LANGUAGE IN SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
1023
Letters
to
the Editor
LANGUAGE IN SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
SmR,-Until a very recent stage of man’s history the search for knowledge was in the hands of a priesthood who guarded most carefully their privileged position. Often the power of this priesthood lay in the ignorance and superstition of those without the order. By the use of language unknown to most people they prevented knowledge from passing to the outsider. After the Renaissance, English came to be used as the language of science and religion in this country, and knowledge was put within the reach of many more people. But today the growing complexities of science are causing a change in the reverse direction. In medicine, for example, each branch is building up a special and ever-increasing vocabulary, and this is producing a series of priesthoods-the haematologists, the new venereologists, the stereochemists, the biophysicists, the cytologists, the pure and applied mathematicians, the epidemiologists. The subdivisions of knowledge will lose much of their value unless the results of applying their special techniques are intelligible to others besides the various high priests. Of late years books havebeen written to try to pass " on the secrets of the new priesthoods, and these popular " books show one way in which the problem has been tackled. Another possible solution appeared in the Services during the late war. This was a slang which covered both everyday and technical subjects ; it was a live method which filled a gap. These examples illustrate two principles which could be used to prevent even greater chaos than at present : either language can be simplified or a new language can be evolved. Ogden with Basic English has shown how speech can be simplified, and Hogben has suggested an international language of science with his I nterglossa. Yet another, Bodmer, in The Loom of Language (p. 48) has emphasised the keynote : " The invention of the alphabet made it possible to democratize reading as the invention of the number 0 made it possible to democratize the art of calculation." An alphabet or a Basic English for science and medicine is a pressing need. The realisation of this aim is not easy, but every editor of a journal can help by insisting on papers being written in the simplest possible language, and frowning upon new words which could easily be rendered in simple terms ; every author can help by writing in simple language. It is asking too much to expect that specialised techniques can be so described that their features are at once understood by a worker in an unrelated field, but it is not asking too much to insist that the main lines of argument in a paper should be presented with consideration for the difficulty of a worker in another field. Unless steps such as these are taken now by editors and edited, scientific and medical workers will soon be struggling in a bog of words. This is a system of planning which requires no committee, and the benefit to knowledge would be incalculable. The pedant has always been a butt for the wit. Now is the time to banish him firmly from the various branches of knowledge. Department of Surgery, JOHN GRIEVE. University of St. Andrews. DIAGNOSIS OF ANÆMIA IN CHILDHOOD your leading article of May 28 you call attention to the need for cooperation between paediatricians and those physicians who havemade a special study of hsematology. The article implies-and in my opinion l’ightly-that haematology is a branch of generahnedicine, Qot of clinical pathology. The haematologist should be just as much a physician as is the " diabetician " ; and, like him, he must be master of a number of specialised methods of examination. The article praises the special haematological clinic at the Boston Infants’ and Children’s Hospital, where in the past twenty years much has been added to our knowledge of blood dyscrasias in childhood. But the adult is at least as worthy of expert haematological care as is the
SiR,-In
child ; and where in the United Kingdom is there
a
equipped haematological clinic
fully
for either juveniles or adults ? I know the excellent work done in Manchester, in Edinburgh, and at Guy’sHospital; but there is nothing comparable with the haematological service of Paul Chevallier at the Hopital Broussais in Paris. He has 100 beds, laboratories, lecture-theatres, and many assistants, some being technicians, some demonstrators, and others postgraduate students from all over Europe. True, he has no beds for infants, but it will not be long before these become available. In this country, haematology, apart from clinical pathology, is a fairly new specialty, and it may be that, given time, an excellent service may develop ; but there is no sound reason why we should start the race so far behind our French colleagues. France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany have their haematological societies ; we have nothing more than some individual memberships of the International Hematological Society. It is to be hoped that something can be done to fill this gap. A. PINEY. London, W.I. TENOTOME FOR MARROW PUNCTURE
SiR,—I should like to draw attention to the value of the tenotome in bone-marrow puncture. At present it does not appear to be widely used in this operation. After premedication and local anaesthesia of the skin and periosteum over the site chosen for puncture, it has been found desirable to nick the skin and subcutaneous tissue down to the periosteum by means of an Adams tenotome (manufactured by Down. Bros. Ltd.). Blood and tissue fluid adhere to the blade for a variable distance from the tip. This distance gives a reasonably accurate measure of the depth of the soft tissues, which can The measurement is vary greatly from case to case. obviously of great use in estimating the position at which the guard of the sternal-puncture needle is to be set. It eliminates the variability due to depth of soft tissue, although, of course, one still has to guess the cortical thickness. The use of the tenotome also obviates puckering of the skin, and usually some additional discomfort to the patient when the sternal-puncture needle is inserted through the skin without previous incision. The incision need only be very small, and, from our experience in some hundreds of cases, it heals just as well and quickly as the puncture-wound using the needle only. Wehave found the tenotome just as useful in carrying out marrow punctures at sites other than the sternum -e.g., the ilium. E. K. BLACKBURN. Royal Infirmary, Sheffield. AIR DISINFECTION on disinfection of handkerchiefs Dumbell and Lovelock in your issue of May 7 is of interest in bearing out our recommendation for the use of hexyl resorcinol as an aerial disinfectant.l Owing to the low vapour pressure of this compound, the aerosol particles have a long life, and ultimate gravitational settlement on surfaces should result in (a) disinfection of infected dust particles, and (b) continuance of disinfectant action on precipitated droplets. Point (b) is of importance in that hexyl resorcinol is slower in action in air than, for example, resorcinol with its higher vapour pressure. The Rideal-Walker coefficients, of relative unimportance for aerosols, again enter the arena when surface sterilisation is required. We found that, in vitro, hexyl resorcinol was 150 times more potent than phenol against Corynebacterium xeros-is, and as an aerosol 700 times as effective as the latter. Resorcinol has a negligible Rideal-Walker coefficient (0-3), yet is 60-70 times more potent in aerosol form than phenol. The relative activity of surface deposits of these three phenols was clearly demonstrable when air sampling was carried out with the Bourdillon slit-sampler.2 No evidence of activity on the surface of culture-plates was obtained when air treated with resorcinol 100 mg. per c.m. was sampled. With phenol at the same concentration slight
SiR,-The work
reported by
Twort, C. C., Baker, A. H., Finn, S. R., Powell, E. O. Camb. 1940, 3, 253. 2. Baker, A. H., Twort, C. C. Ibid, 1944, 6, 382. 1.
J. Hyg.,
Letters
to
the Editor
LANGUAGE IN SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
SmR,-Until a very recent stage of man’s history the search for knowledge was in the hands of a priesthood who guarded most carefully their privileged position. Often the power of this priesthood lay in the ignorance and superstition of those without the order. By the use of language unknown to most people they prevented knowledge from passing to the outsider. After the Renaissance, English came to be used as the language of science and religion in this country, and knowledge was put within the reach of many more people. But today the growing complexities of science are causing a change in the reverse direction. In medicine, for example, each branch is building up a special and ever-increasing vocabulary, and this is producing a series of priesthoods-the haematologists, the new venereologists, the stereochemists, the biophysicists, the cytologists, the pure and applied mathematicians, the epidemiologists. The subdivisions of knowledge will lose much of their value unless the results of applying their special techniques are intelligible to others besides the various high priests. Of late years books havebeen written to try to pass " on the secrets of the new priesthoods, and these popular " books show one way in which the problem has been tackled. Another possible solution appeared in the Services during the late war. This was a slang which covered both everyday and technical subjects ; it was a live method which filled a gap. These examples illustrate two principles which could be used to prevent even greater chaos than at present : either language can be simplified or a new language can be evolved. Ogden with Basic English has shown how speech can be simplified, and Hogben has suggested an international language of science with his I nterglossa. Yet another, Bodmer, in The Loom of Language (p. 48) has emphasised the keynote : " The invention of the alphabet made it possible to democratize reading as the invention of the number 0 made it possible to democratize the art of calculation." An alphabet or a Basic English for science and medicine is a pressing need. The realisation of this aim is not easy, but every editor of a journal can help by insisting on papers being written in the simplest possible language, and frowning upon new words which could easily be rendered in simple terms ; every author can help by writing in simple language. It is asking too much to expect that specialised techniques can be so described that their features are at once understood by a worker in an unrelated field, but it is not asking too much to insist that the main lines of argument in a paper should be presented with consideration for the difficulty of a worker in another field. Unless steps such as these are taken now by editors and edited, scientific and medical workers will soon be struggling in a bog of words. This is a system of planning which requires no committee, and the benefit to knowledge would be incalculable. The pedant has always been a butt for the wit. Now is the time to banish him firmly from the various branches of knowledge. Department of Surgery, JOHN GRIEVE. University of St. Andrews. DIAGNOSIS OF ANÆMIA IN CHILDHOOD your leading article of May 28 you call attention to the need for cooperation between paediatricians and those physicians who havemade a special study of hsematology. The article implies-and in my opinion l’ightly-that haematology is a branch of generahnedicine, Qot of clinical pathology. The haematologist should be just as much a physician as is the " diabetician " ; and, like him, he must be master of a number of specialised methods of examination. The article praises the special haematological clinic at the Boston Infants’ and Children’s Hospital, where in the past twenty years much has been added to our knowledge of blood dyscrasias in childhood. But the adult is at least as worthy of expert haematological care as is the
SiR,-In
child ; and where in the United Kingdom is there
a
equipped haematological clinic
fully
for either juveniles or adults ? I know the excellent work done in Manchester, in Edinburgh, and at Guy’sHospital; but there is nothing comparable with the haematological service of Paul Chevallier at the Hopital Broussais in Paris. He has 100 beds, laboratories, lecture-theatres, and many assistants, some being technicians, some demonstrators, and others postgraduate students from all over Europe. True, he has no beds for infants, but it will not be long before these become available. In this country, haematology, apart from clinical pathology, is a fairly new specialty, and it may be that, given time, an excellent service may develop ; but there is no sound reason why we should start the race so far behind our French colleagues. France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany have their haematological societies ; we have nothing more than some individual memberships of the International Hematological Society. It is to be hoped that something can be done to fill this gap. A. PINEY. London, W.I. TENOTOME FOR MARROW PUNCTURE
SiR,—I should like to draw attention to the value of the tenotome in bone-marrow puncture. At present it does not appear to be widely used in this operation. After premedication and local anaesthesia of the skin and periosteum over the site chosen for puncture, it has been found desirable to nick the skin and subcutaneous tissue down to the periosteum by means of an Adams tenotome (manufactured by Down. Bros. Ltd.). Blood and tissue fluid adhere to the blade for a variable distance from the tip. This distance gives a reasonably accurate measure of the depth of the soft tissues, which can The measurement is vary greatly from case to case. obviously of great use in estimating the position at which the guard of the sternal-puncture needle is to be set. It eliminates the variability due to depth of soft tissue, although, of course, one still has to guess the cortical thickness. The use of the tenotome also obviates puckering of the skin, and usually some additional discomfort to the patient when the sternal-puncture needle is inserted through the skin without previous incision. The incision need only be very small, and, from our experience in some hundreds of cases, it heals just as well and quickly as the puncture-wound using the needle only. Wehave found the tenotome just as useful in carrying out marrow punctures at sites other than the sternum -e.g., the ilium. E. K. BLACKBURN. Royal Infirmary, Sheffield. AIR DISINFECTION on disinfection of handkerchiefs Dumbell and Lovelock in your issue of May 7 is of interest in bearing out our recommendation for the use of hexyl resorcinol as an aerial disinfectant.l Owing to the low vapour pressure of this compound, the aerosol particles have a long life, and ultimate gravitational settlement on surfaces should result in (a) disinfection of infected dust particles, and (b) continuance of disinfectant action on precipitated droplets. Point (b) is of importance in that hexyl resorcinol is slower in action in air than, for example, resorcinol with its higher vapour pressure. The Rideal-Walker coefficients, of relative unimportance for aerosols, again enter the arena when surface sterilisation is required. We found that, in vitro, hexyl resorcinol was 150 times more potent than phenol against Corynebacterium xeros-is, and as an aerosol 700 times as effective as the latter. Resorcinol has a negligible Rideal-Walker coefficient (0-3), yet is 60-70 times more potent in aerosol form than phenol. The relative activity of surface deposits of these three phenols was clearly demonstrable when air sampling was carried out with the Bourdillon slit-sampler.2 No evidence of activity on the surface of culture-plates was obtained when air treated with resorcinol 100 mg. per c.m. was sampled. With phenol at the same concentration slight
SiR,-The work
reported by
Twort, C. C., Baker, A. H., Finn, S. R., Powell, E. O. Camb. 1940, 3, 253. 2. Baker, A. H., Twort, C. C. Ibid, 1944, 6, 382. 1.
J. Hyg.,