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The Historical Origins of Greek and Latin in Medical Terminology

CHAPTER LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Why are most medical and scientific terms derived from Greek? When did Greek begin to be used in medicine? How is it related to modern medical terminology?
2. What are the historical origins of the use of Latin in medical terminology? What is Medieval Latin? What is New Latin? How is Latin used in modern medical and scientific terminology?
3. Who is Asclepius? What is Asclepius’ relationship to ancient Greek medicine? What is the Rod of Asclepius? What is the Caduceus of Hermes?
4. Why were ancient Greek physicians important to European medical schools of the medieval and Renaissance periods? Who is Hippocrates? What is the Hippocratic Corpus? Who is Galen? How are Hippocrates and Galen relevant to modern medicine and medical terminology?

The vast majority of technical and scientific terms used in medical terminology are derived from ancient Greek and Latin. It has been estimated that over 90% of our medical terms come from these two classical languages. Far from becoming obsolete due to the advances in modern medicine, these two so‐called dead languages continue to function as the primary word‐stock for creating new terms for the ever‐changing vocabulary of medicine. This raises the question as to how Greek and Latin became the dominant languages of medicine.

Historical Origins of Greek in Medical Terminology

Unlike everyday English, which draws more heavily upon Latin, over two‐thirds of our modern medical and scientific terms are derived from ancient Greek words, making Greek the language of medicine. The predominance of Greek in medical terminology is a result of ancient Greek medicine’s longstanding influence on Western medicine and civilization. The origins of this influence can be traced back to the 5th and 4th century BC, a period of time in which the Greek‐speaking world saw radical developments in government, architecture, theater, art, philosophy, and science. During this time, a large number of medical texts were written by various Greek authors. These ancient medical texts addressed a wide array of subjects, ranging from broad theories on the nature of the human body and disease to technical works dedicated to explaining the treatment of specific kinds of maladies, such as hemorrhoids and bone fractures. Over time, a collection of these texts came to be known as the Hippocratic Corpus because many of them, at one time or another, were perceived as representing the teachings of Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 375 BC), the famous physician from the Greek island of Cos. That said, of the 60 or so texts making up the Hippocratic Corpus, it is unclear which, if any, of these texts were written by Hippocrates. Nevertheless, the belief that these works were “Hippocratic” led to them being studied, expounded upon, and spread throughout the ancient world, and thereby, becoming a fundamental source of terminologies for the practice and study of medicine.

Greek continued to be the language of medicine even after the Latin‐speaking Romans conquered Greece. This is because most of the doctors practicing in the Roman Empire were Greek, and therefore, they wrote in Greek. Some of these physicians’ writings, particularly the works of Galen of Pergamum (129‐c. 216 AD), became an integral part of medical education in medieval and Renaissance universities. The study of such ancient Greek medical texts via Latin translations in early European medical schools ultimately led to our continued usage of ancient Greek terms for disease in modern medicine. While we continue to use Greek disease terms, such as “cholera,” “eczema,” and “gonorrhea,” it is important to bear in mind that their original meanings do not correspond to their current clinical usage because the origins of such terms are ensconced within ancient medical concepts of disease.

Because ancient physicians developed much of their technical vocabulary from everyday Greek words, most Greek speakers had a basic understanding of what these medical terms meant. For example, when the Alexandrian anatomist Herophilus (335–280 BC) chose the Greek word ἀμνειός (amneios, which appears as “amnion” in modern anatomical terminology) for the membrane surrounding the fetus in the womb, his audience would have recognized it as a word for “lambskin,” thus giving them a basic understanding of the appearance and protective function of the membrane. Or when Galen used the anatomical term σταφυλή (staphyle) for what we call the uvula, his audience would have understood the word picture of a “cluster of grapes,” which is what the Greek word originally meant. Today, medical terms such as amnion and staphylectomy appear completely foreign and technical to most English speakers; their potential meanings have been obscured by the boundaries of language and culture. However, when you learn the original meanings of these Greek words, the multivalent nature of word elements in medical terminology becomes far less baffling and technical. For example, if one recognized that the word element STAPHYL‐ is derived from the Greek word for “a cluster of grapes,” staphyle, it becomes apparent why STAPHYL‐ is used today for both the “uvula” and a “type of bacteria” (the uvula looks like a hanging cluster of grapes, and staphylococci bacteria form grapelike clusters, see Figs. 1.1 and 1.2).

Fig. 1.1 The uvula hanging like a cluster of grapes in the oral cavity.

Source: Line drawing by Chloe Kim.

Fig. 1.2 Clustering of Staphylococcus aureus under a scanning electron microscope (SEM).

Source: Janice Haney Carr/U.S. Department of Health & Human Services/Wikimedia Commons/Public domain.

Historical Origins of Latin in Medical Terminology

Rome’s conquest of Greek lands in the 2nd century BC and the subsequent opportunity for employment led to a large influx of Greek physicians into the Roman world. Over time, the traditional medicine of the Romans was supplanted by Greek medical theories and practices. Greek medical terms began to be translated into Latin, the language of ancient Rome. The translation of Greek medical thought into Latin was pivotal to ancient Greek medicine’s longstanding influence because Latin would later become the universal language of scholarly exchange in government, religion, science, literature, law, and medicine for much of Europe well into the 17th century.

One of the ways Latin‐speaking medical authors conveyed Greek medical terms into Latin was by transliterating them. Transliteration is the movement of a word from one language into another. For example, when faced with the Greek term for “arm,” βραχίων, they first changed the Greek letters into their Latin equivalents, brachion, and then they removed the Greek ending “on” replacing it with the Latin ending “um,” brachium, in order to fit Latin grammar. Many of the Greek terms found in modern medical terminology have been Latinized in this way, and therefore, they adhere to the laws of Latin grammar.

Another way in which Latin medical authors dealt with Greek medical terms was to replace the Greek medical term with a Latin word having an equivalent meaning. For example, the Latin word for “brain,” cerebrum, was often used instead of the transliterated Greek term for the “brain” enkephalos (ἐγκέφαλος). Because many of these Latin terms did not supplant their Greek equivalents, there are a large number of Greek and Latin synonyms used in modern medical terminology. For instance, a reconstructive surgery of the lip can be termed either a labioplasty or a cheiloplasty because the word elements from the Latin labium and the Greek word cheilos are both used in medicine for the English equivalent of “lip.”

Much like their Greek counterparts, Latin medical terms are quite descriptive, having a tendency to be derived from words for everyday objects such as musical instruments (tibia = flute), sounds (murmur = humming), tools (fibula = brooch), plants (glans = acorn), and animals (cancer = crab). Consequently, the Latin equivalents also often retain the ancient medical concepts of disease associated with the Greek term. Aulus Cornelius Celsus (1st century AD), the author of a Latin encyclopedia of Greek medicine, used the Latin term for a “crab,” cancer, in place of the Greek term for “crab,” karkinos, to maintain the metaphor of a burrowing, gnawing, and grasping crab, which was used in antiquity to describe a variety of diseases causing pernicious ulcers. Today, both of these Latin and Greek words are associated with very specific cellular pathologies that metastasize (e.g. cancer and carcinogen). In medical dictionaries, words that are derived from classical Greek have the abbreviation Gr. before the word, and words that have a classical Latin origin have L. before the word.

The Middle Ages or the medieval period (c. 5th–14th century AD) saw a sharp decline in the knowledge of the Greek language in the...