A com mon meaning of ECU is European currency unit, a meaning that might not be very often in scientific medical publications. Radiologists use the same abbreviation for erythema dose, and ED could also mean ethyl dichlorarsine. However, it might also stand for emetic dose. The abbreviation ED means, for instance, effective dose to the pharmacologist. In order to avoid misunderstanding these abbreviations, it is wise to refer to a reliable dic tionary, such as this one prepared by Heister. to write prescriptions is easy but to come to an understanding of people is hard'.Ĭhris Ellis is a family physician from KwaZulu-Natal.Not everyone is a friend of the manifold abbreviations that have by now beCome a part of the scientific language of medicine. As Franz Kafka said in A Country Doctor, '. Even when this has been done, I often need to reframe the advice or just check that everything has been understood, because there may be personal or cultural beliefs that prevent the patient from actually taking the medicines I have prescribed. So the take-home message is to ignore everything I have written above and write prescriptions clearly in English, preferably with an explanation on how and when to take the medicines. In it is a world that has now been overtaken, like fast foods, by fast computerised prescriptions. In front of me is a small book from my student days called Aids to Pharmaceutical Latin published by Baillière, Tindall and Cox (and they don't make publishers with names like that any more). and most turn in after the weather forecast, so telling them to take medicines at 12 a.m. (No one in Pietermaritzburg is awake after 10 p.m. ( ante meridiem!) when they get up in the morning, then after lunch at 2 p.m. I now try to write 8-hourly, and explain to the patient to take the medicine at 6.00 a.m. The instruction qd (meaning 'every day') is even easier to confuse with qid, so it is better just to write 'every day' or 'every 6 hours'.Īnother example arises when I prescribe an antibiotic three times a day. So qqh stands for quatra quaque hora or 'every 4 hours'. The problem arises with the q for ' quattuor', which means 'four', and the q which stands for quaque which means 'each'. Four times a day is qid (quarto in die), although nowadays I rarely prescribe four times a day except for eye and ear drops. Twice a day is bd (bis die) in Latin, and three times a day is tid (ter in die) or tds (ter die sumendus). What exactly does twice a day mean - one at breakfast and one at lunch? Without some further explanation from the doctor, it is often difficult for the patient to understand when to take the pills. The most confusion takes place when we come to times of the day and frequency of taking medications this is not necessarily the influence of Latin. Latinists are a pedantic lot about declensions get the case wrong, and you receive furious letters from retired Latin masters living in Kenton-on-Sea, pointing out the grammatical errors of your ways. One has to be careful here because some use cibos for food in this context and some use cibum. Pc (post cibos) for 'after food' is equally well ingrained along with ac (ante cibos) for 'before food', and cc (cum cibos) for 'with food'. The most common other abbreviations that still linger on are hs (hora somni) for 'at the hour of sleep' and prn (pro re nata) for 'as necessary', and also the instructions starting at the top with Rx (for recipe) and sig for 'label' ( signature). I am not sure that I can now stop putting nocte for 'at night', or mane for 'in the morning', and it is almost a reflex to write od (omne die) for 'every day' and po (per os) for 'by mouth'. Nevertheless, until the homogenised computer prescriptions arrive, there will be a carry-over of the commoner abbreviations until we older members die off. Prescribing that is unclear or illegible is both unethical and dangerous. We are all agreed that the era of prescriptions in Latin is coming to an end and that they should be written in English (or the language of the country). We have moved on from laudanum, nepenthe and the Brompton Cocktail and those magnificent mixtures such as mistura create aromata cum opio and gargarisma potassium chlorate et phenol to an ever-increasing selection of pills and capsules. I have always secretly enjoyed the language of Latin and the elegant magic it lends to my shamanistic practices. Until then, I shall continue to enjoy the ritual of writing out my prescriptions and personally handing them to my patients. With the arrival of computerised prescriptions, one of the last of the apothecary's arts will eventually disappear.
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