Doctors: Cutting Words

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A man of true science uses but few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; whereas the smatterer in science . . . thinks that by mouthing hard words he proves that he understands hard things.

—"Dr. Cuticle" in Herman Melville's White Jacket.

By Melville's criterion, suggests Dr. Lois DeBakey in the New England Journal of Medicine, medicine must be full of "smatterers in science." Hospital records, casual conversations and technical reports "are loaded with shoptalk, incomprehensible to nonphysicians and often confusing even to physicians from other regions." A member of a notable family of surgeons—one brother is Houston Surgeon Michael DeBakey (TIME cover, May 28), another brother, Ernest, is also a surgeon—Dr. Lois, who has a Ph.D. in English and is an associate professor in scientific communication at Tulane University, is a surgeon of language. She advises medical writers to concentrate on cutting out the "learned" words and using the simple substitutes in the following list of choices:

Agrypnia Insomnia Cephalalgia Headache Cholelithiasis Gallstones Deglutition Swallowing Emesis Vomiting Hemorrhage Bleeding Obese Fat Pyrexia Fever Respire Breathe Carrying her criticism right to the end (not "termination") of life, Dr. DeBakey thinks "in extremis is a pretentious expression for dying."