Medical Terms and Their Hidden Origins in Greek and Roman Mythology

By Kimura Sentaro and Jason Morgan

Medical Terms and Their Hidden Origins in Greek and Roman Mythology explores the roots of a variety of different medical terms and how they relate to classical Greek and Roman mythology. Originally written in Japanese, this English translation offers interesting insight into both the history behind the names of body parts, illnesses, medicines, and more, along with charming asides by the author about his time spent as a doctor in the US.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543981582

Book preview

Chapter 1. Gaia – Mother Earth

Gaia is a word used frequently in the media and for brand names—there’s a resort in Miyazaki, Japan called SeaGaia—and the name refers to the Greek goddess Gaia, the mythological Mother Earth. Hesiod writes in his Theogony that she is a divine representation of the land, the air, and the seas.

Before the creation of the Heavens and the Earth, there existed an infinite void called Chaos (from which we get the word gas). Earth (Gaia) and Love (Eros) were born from Chaos, followed by Darkness (Erebus) and Night (Nyx). Erebus was understood to be the dark Underworld of the dead. Aither (origin of ether) and Day (Hemera) were born of Erebus and Nyx. Aither was the mythic energy, or spiritus, that filled the upper atmosphere.

Mythological Etymologies

Gaia

The prefixes ge- and geo- are derived from Gaia and refer to the Earth. The Greek word metron—from which we get meter—means size or measurement, and when combined with ge-, yields geometry—the study of measurements in a space. Combining geo- with graphy (records) gives us geography.

Geographical factors such as climate, race, ethnicity, and culture can act as causes for certain diseases. Past examples of this in Japan include an epidemic of blood-fluke schistosomiasis along the Chikugo River in northern Kyushu, and higher rates of adult T-cell leukemia in certain areas of Kyushu. The use of geography to study diseases is called geographic pathology, and the study of how environment and climate affect one’s health is called geomedicine.

The Russian-born American scientist Selman Waksman (1888-1973), after living in Bremen, Germany for a short time, moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1910. Upon receiving a scholarship from the state of Pennsylvania, Waksman entered Rutgers University, a public university in neighboring New Jersey, and began research under bacteriologist J. G. Lipman. Waksman went on to discover streptomycin in 1942, a discovery famed as a revolutionary treatment for tuberculosis. Prior to this, Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) had discovered penicillin while experimenting with mold. Later work by Sir Howard W. Florey (1898-1968) and Ernst B. Chain (1906-1979) succeeded in the clinical application and mass production of penicillin, resulting in a miraculous antibiotic considered as a magic bullet within the world of medicine. This led to the further discovery of numerous new antibiotic microbes living in the soil, which saved innumerous lives from a variety of contagious diseases that had previously been incurable—true gifts from Gaia (see page 139).

Chaos

Chaos is still used to describe discord or disorder, but it also serves as the origin of the word gas. The Belgian physician, physiologist, and chemist Jan B. van Helmont (1577-1644) was born in Brussels and lived the rest of his life in nearby Vilvoorde. Helmont was the first to discover carbon dioxide as the gas produced when wood is burned, and was the first to propose the concept of gas itself. He referred to carbon dioxide as gas sylvestre (meaning gas from wood). The French pronunciation of chaos sounds like gas, which was the reason Helmont coined this supposedly new word. There are, however, records of the use of gas to refer to air by the famous Swiss philosopher Paracelsus (1493-1541) prior to this.

Aither

In ancient Greece, the upper atmosphere was believed to be filled with a pure energy called aither. Unable to explain what caused thunder and lightning, people believed aither to be a special medium through which light and electricity traveled. The German physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) doubted the existence of aither, and this questioning of previous theory famously led him to develop his own theory of relativity. The substance permeating the lower atmosphere was called aer, which is where the word air comes from.

Anesthetic ether was given its name in 1730 by F. S. Frobenius, who discovered a highly volatile liquid produced by sulfuric acid and alcohol and called it spiritus aethereus, which was later shortened to ether. Dentist William T. G. Morton (1819-1868) was the first to use ether as an anesthetic, at the Massachusetts General Hospital affiliated with Harvard University. On October 16th, 1846, John Collins Warren (1778-1856) removed a tumor from the neck of 12-year-old Gilbert Abbot with the use of ether. The operating amphitheater where this historical feat was performed still exists and is called the Ether Dome. Surprisingly, the Ether Dome is even now commonly used as a venue for conferences.

Hemera and Nyx

Hemera, which means day, serves as the origin for the medical term hemeralopia, a disease in which vision is hampered in bright light (commonly called day blindness). If we separate hemeralopia into its components hemer-, -al-, -op-, and -ia, we get day from hemer, blindness from -al, eyes from opos, and condition of from -ia. The suffix -ia is especially common in medical terminology, such as in hypertonia (high blood pressure).

The opposite of this is nyctalopia (night blindness), which comes from the word nyx, meaning night. Let’s take a look at the word biopsy: bio- means living, and -opsy means to examine—thereby meaning an examination or test done on something still alive. This is a bit of a digression on the word opos (eyes), but in the Spanish language, a single eye is called an ojo, with the plural being ojos. The famous Mexican song La Malagueña begins with the line, Que bonitos ojos tienes, meaning What beautiful eyes you have. In Spanish, garlic is ajo, a son is hijo, and a cow is vaca. These words have alternate, rather interesting meanings in Japanese, with the similarly pronounced aho meaning idiot and baka meaning stupid. So, if you order a steak with garlic in Mexico (ajo con vaca), to a Japanese person, it would sound like you want a moron with some stupid on the side! From the word vaca for cow, the word vaccinia was used to refer to cowpox, which English scientist Edward Jenner (1749-1823) used to create the smallpox vaccine on May 14th, 1796. Approximately 90 years later in 1885, when developing his rabies vaccine, the French microbiologist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) proposed naming all treatments, regardless of disease, as vaccines, in honor of Jenner’s work.

During Edo era-Japan (1603-1868), regional smallpox outbreaks were the norm every winter, with occasional pandemics throughout the entire country. In more recent times in Nagasaki Prefecture, if someone was found with smallpox, they were quarantined in a small hut outside of town and provided food. By 1805, the Jenner method of treating smallpox with cowpox had already spread to Guangdong, China, and news of this new treatment had reached Nagasaki. Hearing of the smallpox vaccine, Nagayo Shuntatsu, a doctor in Nagasaki, built a facility five kilometers outside of the town castle to study its effects. When Philipp Franz von Siebold of Germany famously visited Japan in 1823, he brought with him the cowpox serum but it had spoiled and was unable to be used.

Nagayo was recognized by the local government as a smallpox expert, and thanks to his efforts and the investment from the ruling Omura clan, he was able to build a splendid treatment center, infirmary, housing for doctors, lodging for local officials, and a palace room for vaccination of local nobility on nearby Mt. Furuta.

Nagayo improved on the smallpox vaccination with human smallpox, and instead of the previous method of taking pox scab scrapings and inhaling them, he took powdered scrapings, added water, and applied this to an incision made on the patient’s chest. This revolutionary method greatly decreased the risk of contracting the disease.

At the urging of Nabeshima clan surgeon Ito Genboku, the reigning daimyo of the Nabeshima clan Nabeshima Naomasa contacted Otto Monike, a doctor at the Dutch trading house in Nagasaki, and requested active cowpox serum and scabs to be imported from Batavia (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia).

Nagayo’s grandson Nagayo Sensai sent numerous children to Nagasaki to be vaccinated, one of whom was the son of Nabeshima clan doctor Narabayashi Soken. He then returned to Nagasaki, created vaccine scabs of successfully vaccinated children, performed safe and simple vaccinations at the Mt. Furuta vaccination center, and helped spread vaccinations throughout the region. This was a revolutionary achievement in the history of Japanese medicine.

Chapter 2. Uranus and Cronus

Gaia, goddess of the Earth, gave birth to Uranus, god of the sky, and Pontus, god of the sea. Gaia created the beauties of nature upon the Earth, and Uranus let the rains fall from the sky to allow plants and animals to thrive. This also created the oceans and the lakes. Through the workings of Eros, the god of love, Gaia had 12 children with her son Uranus, of whom six were sons and six were daughters. These children are referred to as the Titans (origin of the word titanium), and they were a tremendously powerful group of gods. Eight of the children paired off and married each other, leading to numerous other gods we will get to later. The male gods born of this union were Oceanus (god of the sea, origin of the word ocean), Coeus, Hyperion, Iapetus, Crius, and Cronus (god of time, origin of the word chronic), and the goddesses were Tethys, Phoebe, Theia, Rhea, Themis, and Mnemosyne (goddess of memory, origin of the word anamnesis, meaning medical history, and amnesia).

With Uranus, Gaia birthed three giants called the Cyclops (origin of the word cyclopia), and another set of three giants called the Hecatoncheires. The Cyclops were giants with a single large eye in the middle of their forehead, and they were the gods of thunder and lightning. The Hecatoncheires (meaning the Hundred-Handed Ones) were giants with one hundred hands and fifty heads.

Uranus took no interest in the children he had with Gaia. In fact, he despised his offspring and banished them to Tartarus, the lowest level of the Underworld. Gaia was angry and hurt by this, and urged her banished children to take revenge, but none were willing to rise up due to their fear of their father. Only the youngest, Cronus, agreed with his mother, and she provided him with an adamantine sickle called a harpe to aid him.

That night, when Uranus came to lay with Gaia, Cronus took up the harpe and castrated his father. Uranus, in his shame, was never seen again. Cronus then cast the severed genitals of Uranus into the sea. This created a foam (aphros) in the sea, from which sprang Aphrodite (origin of the word aphrodisiac), the goddess of beauty. Aphrodite is also known by her Roman equivalent, Venus.

Cronus took his sister Rhea as his wife, and they had six children together. Cronus governed as king of the gods in place of his father Uranus, but was troubled by prophecy made by Uranus that, just like his father, Cronus would be overthrown by one of his children. To prevent this, he made sure to swallow each of his five children: Hades, Poseidon, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera.

This dismayed his wife Rhea, and when she became pregnant with their next son Zeus, she fled to the isle of Crete, hid the newborn Zeus in a cave, and presented her husband with a stone wrapped up in swaddling clothes. Cronus, believing the stone to be a child of his, swallowed it whole. This allowed Zeus to live, leading to a great turning point in Greek mythology.

Mythological Etymologies

Uranus

On March 13th, 1781, German-born English astronomer Sir William Herschel (1738-1822) discovered a new planet. This planet would later be named after Uranus, god of the sky.

The radioactive element uranium also gets its name from Uranus. It was discovered from uraninite ore as a new element by German chemist Martin H. Klaproth (1743-1817) in 1789. At that time, newly discovered metals were traditionally named after heavenly bodies, and this new element was named uranium after the planet Uranus. This element was later found to be the heaviest naturally occurring element.

The Italian nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), while teaching physics at the Sapienza University of Rome, was successful in analyzing the fission products resulting when uranium is bombarded with neutrons and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for his work. Later, Otto Hahn (1879-1968) and Fritz Strassmann (1902-1980) succeeded in demonstrating nuclear fission with uranium. Immediately after receiving the Nobel Prize, Fermi fled the dictatorship of Mussolini and went to America. After a stay at Columbia University, Fermi went on to the University of Chicago, where he used nuclear fission to create the first atomic bomb, thereby ushering in the Atomic Age. The nuclear fission of a single kilogram of uranium releases energy equivalent to 3,000 tons of coal.

There are also several medical terms derived from Uranus. Uranism was used to refer to any kind of sexual perversion, due to the relationship