A Pox on "Medicant"

To many doctors, a headache is "cephalalgia." Itching is "pruritus." Swallowing is "deglutition." Professionals tend to view such words as tools of the trade and an aid to precise speech. But Lois DeBakey, a professor of scientific communication at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, thinks that technical jargon not only alienates patients but masks fuzzy thinking.

In seminars and with a traveling lecture entitled "Please, Doctor, Watch Your Language," DeBakey (sister of Heart Surgeon Michael DeBakey) campaigns against "medicant," her term for the linguistic disease that afflicts physicians. Lois and her sister Selma, who is also on the Baylor faculty, spoof the ways in which medicant fractures ordinary language by asking audiences to scan horrible examples from medical journals. A favorite: the article by a professional administrator that urged medical staffs to "take an aggressively penetrating approach to the communicative dimensions of the interfaces between institutions of medicine." Another example: "Birth weight and gestation were obtained for 245 deaths with congenital heart disease that were autopsied." They use cartoons to illustrate medical cliche: "the patient was explored"; "two days after admission, the patient was operated."

Says DeBakey: "Until society restores literacy to a position of esteem, there is no motivation for young people to learn to read and write." Aptly enough, she advises doctors to heed the words of Alexander Pope: "Words are like leaves; and where they most abound/ Much fruit of sense is rarely found."

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