Medical Terminology

TerryB

Lt. Colonel
Joined
Dec 7, 2008
Location
Nashville TN
Sorting through service records has forced me to go to online dictionaries. This might be a good thread to contribute anything you may have picked up. Or maybe I should go to the A-Z thread. Gunshot wound was Vulnus Sclopeticum, or something like that. Doctors back then apparently had the same bad handwriting they use on prescritions today. Hemophthis meant spitting blood. The gunshot wound was hard to figure out, and had me thinking it was some sort of STD until I finally found it in the third dictionary I looked at. :hmmm:
 
Sorting through service records has forced me to go to online dictionaries. This might be a good thread to contribute anything you may have picked up. Or maybe I should go to the A-Z thread. Gunshot wound was Vulnus Sclopeticum, or something like that. Doctors back then apparently had the same bad handwriting they use on prescritions today. Hemophthis meant spitting blood. The gunshot wound was hard to figure out, and had me thinking it was some sort of STD until I finally found it in the third dictionary I looked at. :hmmm:

They had some interesting words for aegrotantem, enough to give you a cephalalgia. Aegrotantem is illness, sickness. Cephalagia is headache.
 
A lot of terms have the Latin root but are not the same, like hemoptysis being hemophthis. Or maybe they didn't spell so well. I did medical transcription for 20 years so can help anyone with medical terminology or definition, but some of those Civil War terms do make me scratch my head.
 
A lot of terms have the Latin root but are not the same, like hemoptysis being hemophthis.

Hemoptysis was also used--it's actually the most common spelling I've seen--and don't forget all the "haemo-" spelling variations!

Here's a useful book, all online:

Robley Dunglison's 1865 Dictionary of Medical Science

The one disadvantage of searching inside is that if the main listing of the word has an accent symbol added to show the accented syllable, the search engine can't pick up the whole word. But one can usually get pretty close. For example, "hemoptysis" still gets you to the right page, because it picks up the word within the definition.

I don't see hemophthis as a synonym for hemoptysis, but a regular google search corrects it to hemophthisis (I really do think the doctor was trying for hemo- and -phthisis) and offers the definition "An obsolete term for anemia resulting from abnormal degeneration or destruction, or a deficiency in the formation of red blood cells." That makes sense: hemo=blood and phthisis=wasting.

But to further complicate things, I could imagine a doctor getting hemo=blood, phthisis=consumption and "hemoptysis" all mixed up, and writing hemophthis (mispelled without the extra "is") as a synonym for coughing up blood due to consumption. One would need to see the context in which "hemophthis" was written to figure it out and make sure he really was talking about coughing up blood.

On a separate note, I never know how to contribute to the A-Z type of threads, because I could just start at the beginning of Dunglison's book and work to the back, but it seems pointless to duplicate thousands of period definitions that are already readily available. A discussion like this, though, is pretty interesting, when you have what appears to be a doctor's own neologism for coughing up blood during consumption, if that is indeed clearly from context what he's trying to say, rather than anemia. Incidentally, anemia or anaemia was a perfectly good period word too. TerryB, do you have the context in which hemophthis was used, and evidence the doctor meant hemoptysis?
 
Monroe\'s Disability.jpg
 
Monroe Pointer originally joined the Maynard Rifles, Co L, of the 154th Tenn Inf in March 1862 in Memphis. He was wounded in the neck at Shiloh, then discharged for disability during Bragg's Kentucky Campaign. He ended the war as a Mississippi Conscript at Grenada, Mississippi. The above document uses some of the arcane medical terminology to describe his condition as of January 1865.
 
Hemoptysis was also used--it's actually the most common spelling I've seen--and don't forget all the "haemo-" spelling variations!

Here's a useful book, all online:

Robley Dunglison's 1865 Dictionary of Medical Science

The one disadvantage of searching inside is that if the main listing of the word has an accent symbol added to show the accented syllable, the search engine can't pick up the whole word. But one can usually get pretty close. For example, "hemoptysis" still gets you to the right page, because it picks up the word within the definition.

I don't see hemophthis as a synonym for hemoptysis, but a regular google search corrects it to hemophthisis (I really do think the doctor was trying for hemo- and -phthisis) and offers the definition "An obsolete term for anemia resulting from abnormal degeneration or destruction, or a deficiency in the formation of red blood cells." That makes sense: hemo=blood and phthisis=wasting.

But to further complicate things, I could imagine a doctor getting hemo=blood, phthisis=consumption and "hemoptysis" all mixed up, and writing hemophthis (mispelled without the extra "is") as a synonym for coughing up blood due to consumption. One would need to see the context in which "hemophthis" was written to figure it out and make sure he really was talking about coughing up blood.

On a separate note, I never know how to contribute to the A-Z type of threads, because I could just start at the beginning of Dunglison's book and work to the back, but it seems pointless to duplicate thousands of period definitions that are already readily available. A discussion like this, though, is pretty interesting, when you have what appears to be a doctor's own neologism for coughing up blood during consumption, if that is indeed clearly from context what he's trying to say, rather than anemia. Incidentally, anemia or anaemia was a perfectly good period word too. TerryB, do you have the context in which hemophthis was used, and evidence the doctor meant hemoptysis?
See the example I posted below. I can make out the second word as a form of hemoptysis, but the one regarding the heart has escaped my memory. Monroe died relatively young, around 1890, I think.
 
See the example I posted below. I can make out the second word as a form of hemoptysis, but the one regarding the heart has escaped my memory. Monroe died relatively young, around 1890, I think.

I think you're right, it's "heamoptysis," instead of "haemoptysis"--pretty close. The other is "hypertrophy of heart."
 
A lot of terms have the Latin root but are not the same, like hemoptysis being hemophthis. Or maybe they didn't spell so well. I did medical transcription for 20 years so can help anyone with medical terminology or definition, but some of those Civil War terms do make me scratch my head.
Wow, 20 years of medical transcription! Hope you will hang out on this new forum and jump in often! We can sure use someone with your expertise.
 
I like it!:D My guess is that the railroad accident is the accurate report, assuming one of them is accurate, because there would be so many reports of "gunshot" "conball" that a clerk, or even the examining doctor, could just assume Major Ingram's injured leg was yet another. I can't see any obvious reason for making up a broken leg due to an accident with a piece of railroad track. A quick search shows that the 12th Alabama was tearing up railroad tracks about that time.
 
I know this some off topic but since Medical Transcription was mentioned, I thought it was okay to post. My Mom's first job at a Lexington, Ky. hospital was in the Medical Records Department. She did Medical Transcription. A little later she went to the Medical Records Librarian School at St. Mary's Hospital in Brooklyn New York. That hospital is now closed. She graduated with certificate in Medical Records Librarian. They are in charge of all medical records at hospitals. She taught at St. Mary's for about 3 years.

When we moved to Louisville, Ky. she became head Medical Records Librarian for Jewish Hospital. She also opened a school for Medical Records Librarians which was part of the University of Louisville and Jewish Hospital. She not only had students from all over the U.S. but from Nepal, Mexico, Brazil and Panama.

Later my Mom helped to set up and run the Medical Records Depatment at the University of Kentucky Medical Hospital. She was honored by the University and the state of Kentucky.

She late was head of Department for State of Kentucky that supervised all state hospital medical records departments. For her outstanding work she recieved her Ky. Colonel certificate. She also received several awards from the National and State Medical Records Librarian Associations. She had also written several textbooks.

We are very proud of Mom and feel she added so much to keeping correct medical records at hospitals. Shortly after her death in November, 1999 she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for her work for the State of Ky. in Medical Record field. I know she was looking down from heaven and was so proud to get this award. I will cherish it always.
 
What you may want to do is look for medical dictionaries from the middle ages, as you will find that the latin did not change. I remember seeing one from Italy a while back that was translated.
 
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