Word of the day: obversion

The word of the day is obversion:

3. Logic. a form of inference in which a negative proposition is obtained from an affirmative, or vice versa, as “None of us is immortal” is obtained by obversion from “All of us are mortal.”

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/obversion)

"Baillie's book, written for surgeons and anatomists, was the obverse of Vesalius's project: if Vesalius had mapped out 'normal' anatomy, Baillie mapped the body in its diseased, abnormal state."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies

Word of the day: venesection

The word of the day is venesection:

—noun Surgery.

1. phlebotomy.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/venesection)

 

"In the course of explaining the opinion of the divine Hippocrates and Galen, I happened to delineate the veins on a chart, think that thus I might be able easily to demonstrate what Hippocrates understood by the expression kat' 'i'xiu, for you know how much dissension and controversy on venesection was stirred up, even among the learned."

 - Andreas Vesalius, as quoted by Siddhartha Mukherjee in The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer