Phrase of the day: folie a deux

The phrase of the day is folie à deux:

1. the sharing of delusional ideas by two people who are closely associated.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/folie+a+deux)

"It was a perfect folie à deux—endless funds fueling limitless enthusiasm and vice versa.  The more Spiegelman looked for retroviruses in cancer cells, the more he found, and the more funds were sent his way."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: fungate

The word of the day is fungate:

To grow rapidly like a fungus.

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

"Many of the patients counted as 'alive' had long been discharged to terminal-care facilities with advanced, fungating lesions of breast cancer, presumably to die, with no designated follow-up."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: prodrome

The word of the day is prodrome:

1. a premonitory symptom.

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

"The eradication of H. pylori infection in young men and women reduced the incidence of gastric cancer.  In older patients, in whom chronic gastritis had smoldered for several decades, eradication of the infection had little effect.  In these elderly patients, presumably the chronic inflammation had already progressed to a point that its eradication made no difference.  For cancer prevention to work, Auerbach's march—the prodrome of cancer—had to be halted early."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: semiotics

The word of the day is semiotics:

1. the study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior; the analysis of systems of communication, as language, gestures, or clothing.
2. a general theory of signs and symbolism, usually divided into the branches of pragmatics, semantics, and syntactics.

study of signs and symbols with special regard to function and origin, 1880, from Gk. semeiotikos "observant of signs," adj. form of semeiosis "indication," from semeioun "to signal," from sema "sign."

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

"But since the FTC's role was to regulate tobacco advertisements, it could certainly investigate whether 'filtered' cigarettes were truly as safe as advertised.  It was a brave, innovative attempt to bell the cat, but as with so much of tobacco regulation, the actual hearings that ensued were like a semiotic circus.  Clarence Little was asked to testify, and with typically luminous audacity, he argued that the question of testing the efficacy of filters was immaterial because, after all, there was nothing harmful to be filtered anyway."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: anergy

The word of the day is anergy:

1. Pathology. deficiency of energy.
2. Immunology. lack of immunity to an antigen.

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

"In a nation obsessed with cancer, the attribution of a vast preponderance of a major cancer to a single, preventable cause might have been expected to provoke a powerful and immediate response.  But front-page coverage notwithstanding, the reaction in Washington was extraordinarily anergic."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: gray eminence

The word of the day is gray eminence:

1. a person who wields unofficial power, especially through another person and often surreptitiously or privately.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gray+eminence)

"Once again, Bradford Hill, the éminence grise of epidemiology, proposed a solution to this impasse."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Phrase of the day: bell the cat

The phrase of the day is bell the cat:

19. bell the cat, to attempt something formidable or dangerous.

"By the early 1950s, though, cigarette ads, and cigarette brands, were being 'designed' for segmented groups: urban workers, housewives, women, immigrants, African-Americans—and, to preemptively bell the medical cat—doctors themselves."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: fulminant

The word of the day is fulminant: 

1. occurring suddenly and with great intensity or severity
2. Pathology. developing or progressing suddenly

c.1600, from Fr. fulminant or directly from L. fulminantem, prp. of fulminare (see fulminate). (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fulminant)

"Jenny, Goldstein realized, 'has leukemia and is currently in the hospital because she developed jaundice.  Her eyeballs are still yellow'—presaging fulminant liver failure."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

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

Word of the day: ipecac

The word of the day is ipecac:

1. the dried root of a shrubby South American plant, Cephaelis ipecacuanha, of the madder family.
2. the plant itself.
3. a drug consisting of the dried roots of this plant, used as an emetic, purgative, etc., and as the source of emetine.

1788, borrowing via Port. of a shortened form of Tupi ipecacuana (1682), a medicinal plant of Brazil, the Indian word said to mean "small plant causing vomit."

"The apothecary thus soon filled up with an enormous list of remedies for cancer: tincture of lead, extracts of arsenic, boar's tooth, fox lungs, rasped ivory, hulled castor, ground white-coral, ipecac, senna, and a smattering of purgatives and laxatives."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Word of the day: abstruse

The word of the day is abstruse:

1. hard to understand; recondite; esoteri
2. Obsolete. secret; hidden.

c.1600, from L. abstrusus, pp. of abstrudere "conceal," lit. "to thrust away," from ab- "away" + trudere "to thrust, push" (see extrusion). (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/abstruse) 

"Hippocrates had once abstrusely opined that cancer was 'best left untreated, since patients live longer that way.'"

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: a Biography of Cancer