GREEK AND LATIN IN MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY（希腊语和拉丁语在医学术语）.pdf

APP04 greek latin.qxd 8/13/05 12:23 PM Page APP 9 GREEK AND LATIN IN MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY John H. Dirckx, MD History Remnants of Classical Grammar Modern Western medicine traces its roots to the 5th century BCE, Certain grammatical patterns and rules characteristic of the classical when the Greek physician Hippocrates (460-377) first attributed ill- languages are retained and observed with classical words and phrases ness to physical causes, distinguished medical practice from priestly that have been adopted into medical English. Greek and Latin are ministrations, and taught diagnosis by observation and treatment by more highly inflected languages than English. That is, they make more fostering or restoring natural processes. Hippocrates and his disciples extensive and more varied use of changes in the endings of words to and successors, notably Galen (CE 130–201), produced a large and signal shifts of meaning (such as from singular to plural) and to show diverse body of medical writings in Greek. Many of the anatomic, syntactic relations among the words of a phrase or sentence. pathologic, and therapeutic terms found in those writings remain in Plural Forms. Terms that retain their Latin form are usually, but not use today, some with little or no change in meaning. always, pluralized as in the parent language. Whereas we form the From the beginning of the Christian era to the early 19th century, plural of an English noun by adding -s or -es