Page:A thesaurus of Medical words and phrases.djvu/16

 medical subjects will likewise be aided by reference to such a work.

Those outside of the profession who will have most need to consult the work are stenographers and typewriters engaged in transcribing the proceedings of medical societies or reporting trials in which expert testimony is entered; translators of scientific writing from other languages into English; and lawyers, journalists, or novelists who are dealing with subjects requiring the employment of technical medical terms.

As examples of familiar vernacular medical words the correct technical equivalent for which we might desire, and would generally be unable to find in a dictionary, we might mention—

In the matter of synonyms the authors have endeavored to perform for medical science a service never before attempted, at least in anything like the same degree as here exhibited. Writers and speakers desiring to avoid the unpleasant repetition of words will appreciate the value of this labor. Anemia, Melancholy, Aneurysm, Food, Growth, Hoarseness, Blindness, Leukorrhea, Fibroid tumor. Fatness, Flatulence, are examples of words rich in technical synonyms. Thousands of other words having a larger or smaller number of terms which might be substituted for them have been similarly treated in this work.

Again, another advantage to writers that the present work possesses over dictionaries is the original method of presenting a great many technical terms, according to what we might call the thesauric plan. Under the headings Shaped and Resembling, for example, have been grouped a large number of descriptive adjectives expressive of shape or other resemblance to things. These terms will be very useful to medical authors, and, so far as we know, are nowhere else to be found. The caption Fear has served to bring together the technical names for different