Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/98

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

s. XL JAN. 31,

technical or professional" Latin term was caught up by the penny-a-liner, and came to everybody's eyes and" ears. Apparently everybody who read or heard of the mys- terious word rushed at once, not to the Syden- ham Society's or other medical lexicon, but to the * New English Dictionary ' for some account of it, and, not finding it there, wrote to me to express their disappointment or indignation indignation being especially strong on the part of those whose friends or relatives had oeen victims of the disease, which, having thus shown that it was not to be trifled with, ought to have been treated with respect in the dictionary. I have had more letters about the omission of appendicitis than about any word in the language. Per- haps readers of ' N. & Q.,' who now know the facts, will abstain from swelling the number. No dictionary before 1890 contains the word; it is .wanting even in the ' Century,' 1889.

Words in -itis have come greatly into popu- lar use during the last twenty years. Pre- viously to that I doubt whether any other than bronchitis (invented in 1814) was " under- standed of the people," and even that was often put into more familiar guise as Brown Titus or Brown Typhus as good Englishings as the once fashionable sparrowgrass for asparagus. When a part of the body was inflamed, our mothers were satisfied to call it inflammation of the throat, the ear, the eye, or the bowels; now their children prefer to be professionally assured that they are suffering from laryngitis, otitis, ophthalmitis, or perito- nitis; familiarity with these mysterious names seems to make the disease itself better known, and so, according to the adage, "half-cured." When you can call your malady endocarditis, you have got to the very heart of the matter, and know that that is what it really is. The result is that it becomes doubtful whether we can any longer say that words in -it-is (whether or not English in form; are not English in use ; and it is evident that appen- dicitis, though unknown to English dictiona- ries before 1890, must be included in all dictionaries for the future. But what of all the thousand -itis names for diseases not yet popular? J. A. H. MURRAY.

L, T s ., te ? m was used b ^ Dr - w - O^er at the Philadelphia County Medical Society on 14 December, 1887. See Medical News, 7 January, 1888, p. 26 (quoted in Braithwaite's 'Retrospect of Medicine,' xcvii. 50).

ADRIAN WHEELER.

WATCHHOUSES FOR THE PREVENTION OF BODYSNATCHING (9 th S. x. 448 ; xi. 33). In connexion with MR. MANLEY'S note on the

watchman who formerly guarded the burial- ground of the Maiden Lane Synagogue, I may mention that Mr. Abraham Mocatta, of Mansell Street, Goodman's Fields, in his will, dated 30 January, 1800 (P.C.C. 132 Adderley), leaves instructions that his grave should be watched for twelve months by three men, one by night [day 1] and two by night, and if at the end of the year no disturbance of his remains has taken place, 200Z. is to be divided among them; but should they fail in their trust the money is to go to charities. His tomb is in good preservation, and is in the interesting burial-ground of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the Mile End Road.

THOMAS COLYER-FERGUSSON. Wombwell Hall, near Gravesend.

In the wall or railing surrounding Ber- mondsey Churchyard are two small polygonal buildings of one floor only. The one nearest the church is partially shown in a print, dated 1804, given in E. T. Clarke's ' Bermondsey,' 1901 ; but these buildings are probably much older. Were they constables' lock-ups for evildoers ; or what was their original use ? ADRIAN WHEELER.

Bermoudsey.

AUTHOR OF LINES WANTED (9 th S. xi. 28). The lines quoted by DR. MURRAY form the eighth and ninth stanzas of John Greenleaf Wnittier's poem 'William Francis Bartlett' (1878). The first line should read- When Earth, as if on evil dreams.

WALTER JERROLD. Hampton-on-Thames.

KURISH GERMAN (9 th S. x. 406). Some of the pronunciations given by MR. ACKERLEY in his interesting note as peculiar to Kur- land are common to many parts of Germany ; the pronunciation of the modified vowels u and o as ih and eh respectively can be heard, for instance, in Saxony, and the letter g is very frequently pronounced soft in such ex- pressions as "heil'ger Mann," "Elgersburg," in various provinces. In fact, there is excellent authority for the soft sound of g in such forns as "heil'ger." Bude, which is given as M.H.G., is N.H.G.; the M.H.G. form is buode. CHARLES BUNDY WILSON.

The State University of Iowa.

" To THE NINES " (9 th S. x. 387, 456 ; xi. 34). The reas9n why I referred to Mr. C. P. G. Scott's article in vol. xxiii. of the Transactions of the American Philological Association is because the treatment of the whole question of "attraction" in English is so full, and the number of quotations is so large. I am quite satisfied with his, explanation, and I think