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Technical Words from Simple Latin Roots

February 16, 2017 By Mary Twomey

No one associates going to a Houston dentist with fun, but there is one aspect that is interesting at least: the specialized dental terminology dentists and dental hygienists use. Dentists are medical doctors and like all medical terms, many used in dentistry have their basis in Latin. Science and medicine still rely on this ancient language today. You might be surprised how many of the words you hear at the dentist’s office are rooted in Latin.

Patients at teeth cleaning Clearlake who have regular care, or visit a cosmetic dentist, know they can always ask what a specialized dental term means. In Latin the word ‘teeth’ is ‘mordices.’ We do not usually think about many of the terms we have come to associate with the dentist. For instance, everybody knows tooth enamel is the glossy hard covering on the tooth. But, did you know the word ‘enamel,’ as in tooth enamel, is ‘electrum’ in Latin. This is true for many medical terms and dentistry is no exception.

Many of the other terms we use in everyday life are also originally from Latin. There are even a few terms that are written and spoken in English, but which are actually still fully Latin words. For instance, the dental term ‘cementum’ and the term ‘cusp’ are both the very same words in Latin. Cementum means “a rough stone” and cusp means “a point.” However, most Latin words have not survived so unmodified and are a bit different in the English language. Here are just a few of those terms that started in the Latin language, long ago:

  • Pulp – From Latin word ‘pulpam.’ The soft interior of a tooth.
  • Canal – From Latin word ‘canalis.’ A channel or tube.
  • Ligament – From Latin word ‘ligamentum.’ An encompassing band.
  • Socket – From Latin word ‘supputatis.’ Things that are meant to be fit together, such as a shoe and a sock.

Dentists of the 21st century base all their professional care on the precise language of their medical profession. Without such precise words, confusion might reign. Since people have always needed help with their dental problems from dentists they trust, it is no wonder the terms of the profession come from Latin, a language that was current, so long ago. This is one reason you can rely on modern dentistry, it is not a new fad nor at all experimental. The terms are as tried-and-true as the dental medicine.

Is Medical Writing Done by Real Doctors?

February 16, 2017 By Mary Twomey

As best as board certified physician John T can figure, he has logged some two hundred hours into the registry for doctors on the internet. For someone who has achieved a lot growing up in a suburban region near Ohio, Tom knows the importance of bringing the doctors and patients community together. What might be construed as unique – the writer part in Tom who is a well-known facial plastic surgeon – is this: unlike his peers, he is very much interested in giving his knowledge out to the public that wants to hear from the perspectives of physicians for certain ailments.

To understand this bond is to understand that many people across the world do not always want to visit doctors for their illnesses or conditions. Some have ailments that are mild or manageable. Those people are reluctant to go to doctors for many reasons, including cost and availability of treatment. What many doctors in the medicine world lack is a good penmanship that patients wish they had. But not everyone lack this trait. For facial plastic surgeon Tom, logging into his board certified doctor’s account whenever time permits has become a hobby that he has been pursuing for a decade now. Patients are known to question everything, from their symptoms to medications, and perhaps the best way to cure their ailments naturally.

Those doctors who do the medical writing tend to know the cause and symptoms of these patients after careful review. For this the patients are thankful. The medical writers listen to endless stories during their career, and a good chunk of their time is spend curing these issues. It is only natural that these writers narrate the stories along with conditions, causes and cure through their writings. At their best, they can be telling these stories to a patient who has similar conditions. In fact, there have been many circumstances where those writings have cured patients as expected. Like many, these stories are tales of fear and agony that patients go through when they are suffering. It is also the stories of treatments, miracles, hope and breakthroughs of strangers rescued by these doctor writers.

The theme for these writers come without effort, probably because of all the practice they have had. They have patients waiting for them on a daily basis whose life is going to change for good. They have the vivid images of their future in health and the many questions lingering in their minds that they always raise when they are visiting hospitals. What happens to them? How do they get cured? Doctor writers write around these situations on their blogs and forums. They have oodles of real-life experiences that they tap from that are depicted in these writings. What we can understand from all of these is that there is a wide network of doctors or practicing physicians who engage in medical writing on a regular basis. And most of them cherish what they do and would love nothing more than to write about them.

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