Page:A thesaurus of Medical words and phrases.djvu/13



The "Thesaurus of Medical Words and Phrases" aims to perform for medical literature the same services which Roget's "Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases" has done for literature in general; that is, instead of supplying, as an ordinary dictionary does, the meaning to given words, it reverses the process, and when the meaning or idea is in the mind, it endeavors to supply the fitting term or phrase to express that idea. It aims especially to give the technical equivalents of vernacular or vulgar medical words, and under appropriate headings to present all the technical words associated with a given subject.

As the field to be covered and the problems to be solved were totally different from those of general literature, the authors were obliged to proceed upon a plan differing from that which obtains in Roget's great work. In the present work the headings representing the subjects are arranged alphabetically, which does away with the index—a necessary adjunct to the use of Roget's Thesaurus. This work differs also from the latter in that brief definitions are given to obviate the constant reference to a lexicon to discover the meanings of the terms.

While any and all categorematic words, useful to point the way to desired technical terms, have been utilized as captions, those to which preference has been given are names for anatomic parts. The names of functions, symptoms, secretions, and excretions—in both their generic and specific applications—also figure very prominently as headings.

Under each caption will be found all the principal technical words and synonyms which are directly associated with or suggested by the caption considered as a subject. Definitions precede the terms merely by way of identification; and so far as