医学专业英语上册(第一章).pdf

Chapter 1 Introduction to Medical Terminology Medical terminology refers to the words and phrases which have been developed to describe the procedures, medications, instrum ents, anatomical structures, etc. used in the field of medicine. It is, in a very real sense, the language of medicine. Medical language, like the language of a people, also has a historical developm ent. Current medical vocabulary includes terms built from Greek and Latin word parts, som e of which were used by Hippocrates and Aristotle over 2000 years ago. With the advancement of medical and scientific knowledge, medical language changes. Some words are discarded, the meanings of others are altered, and new words are added. The Structure of Medical Terminology It may seem like an impossible task to commit the spelling and meaning of 100,000 different medical terms to memory - and in fact, for most of us it is. Fortunately, it is not necessary. The fact is that most seemingly complex medical terms are simply combinations of much sm aller subset s of word parts. This is a critically important concept to understand. It is not unreasonable to expect to memorize several hundred prefixes, suffixes and root words in a relatively short period of tim e. Then, once these word part s are learned, they can be combined to form literally thousands of complex medical terms. Most medical terms consist of one or more parts. These word part s may include one or more of the following: Root Words: is the core of the word; therefore each medical term contains one or more word roots. Prefixes : may be used to modify the meaning of a word. Many medical terms do not have a prefix. Suffixes: is used to modify the meaning of a word. Most medical terms have a suffix. Combining Vowels : is a word part , usually an o, and is used between two