Last week I discussed meldonium, which was banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in January 2016 for use by sportsmen and women, because it supposedly increases blood flow and […]
Jeff Aronson’s Words
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Meldonium
Meldonium is in the news again. It was banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in January 2016 for use by sportsmen and women, because it supposedly increases blood flow […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Medical catachresis—ambiguity
Catachresis, the mistaken use of one term for another, can arise through confusibility, which I discussed last week, or through ambiguity. Ambiguity (Latin amb-, implying both ways, + agere to […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Medical catachresis—confusibility
Catachresis (Greek κατάχρησις, from χρῆσθαι to use, κατά giving a sense of perversion) is the mistaken use of one term for another. When not due to sheer ignorance, it can […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . The wheel of evidence
Last week I discussed the concept of teleoanalysis, in which different types of evidence from disparate sources are analysed either simultaneously or sequentially. To be clear, the term implies not […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Teleoanalysis
A meta-analysis is an analysis of analyses. Specifically, it is an analysis of the combined results of several studies, typically randomised clinical trials. However, other forms of evidence can be […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Adrenaline and epinephrine
Most therapeutic medicines have at least three different names. The chemical name, whose form generally follows the rules issued by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). For […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Being one, two, or many
As I noted last week, animals are monophyodonts, diphyodonts, or polyphyodonts. Rodents and some cetaceans, for example, are monophyodonts—their teeth grow continuously and are never replaced. Humans, and most other […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Nonexistent words, nonexistent meanings
As I noted last week, “spuria”, defined in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as “spurious works, words, etc.”, was first recorded in 1918. The word appeared in Rupert Brooke: a […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Medical anniversaries in 2018
My list of medical anniversaries in 2018 is restricted to those that are multiples of 50 years. Thus, I have not included, for example, the 40th anniversary of the first […]