Tuesday 8 May 2018

Medical Malapropisms etc.

     Someone sent me the list below a few days ago.  Quite funny, but they pale in the face of medical malapropisms which can often be much funnier, for instance the patient in my early days of practice in Dublin, who informed me she had 'High - pretensions' or another who informed me her doctor told her she had 'Acute Vagina'!  God help the poor doctor who would be accused of saying that today, even though it be a medical malopropism. 
     Men, commonly mislabeled their prostate as their prostrate.
    Some other terms from my student and intern days in Dublin:
     Bilious - meaning naseated
     Grippe - meaning the 'flu'
     Fester - meaning pus forming or suppurating
     Chillblains - small cyanotic (blue-ish) inflamed areas on hands and feet due cooling and then rapid heating in front of the fire.  Were very common in all age groups in the winter.  In half a century of practice in Canada I have never seen one.  I had my last one when I boarded the Empress of England (Cunard Line) en route to Canada.
      Beeling - throbbing
      Nerves - meant anything from mild anxiety to major psychotic disorders.
      And of course 'Liverish', which has 93 synonyms!
      There were many others that I can't remember that I will try to recall.
      Equally quaint to my ears was when I first had a nauseated patient in Canada tell me that he felt as though he was "going to toss his cookies!"

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If you have any quaint or amusing examples, please send them to me.

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