Word: pruritus
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...many doctors, a headache is "cephalalgia." Itching is "pruritus." Swallowing is "deglutition." Professionals tend to view such words as tools of the trade and an aid to precise speech. But Lois DeBakey, a professor of scientific communication at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, thinks that technical jargon not only alienates patients but masks fuzzy thinking...
...LIVER. If a woman has had pregnancies marked by either jaundice or pruritus (diffuse itching), she should not go on the Pill, suggests Dr. Robert A. Hartley of Baltimore. Both these conditions result from impaired liver function, and the Pill is likely to reproduce the effects of pregnancy. Some gynecologists, however, believe the Pill is safe if the woman has had infectious hepatitis and has fully recovered from her jaundice...
According to the semilegendary Hippocrates, father of Western medicine, writing 600 years after David, the oldster's lot was not a happy one: "Old men suffer from difficulty of breathing, catarrh accompanied by coughing, difficult micturition, pains at the joints, kidney disease, dizziness, apoplexy, cachexia [wasting], pruritus [itching] of the whole body, sleeplessness, watery discharges from bowels, eyes and nostrils, dullness of sight, cataract, hardness of hearing...
...patients were assured by their physicians," said Gastroenterologist Weiss "that the upset and pruritus [itching] were only temporary and would subside. After a week of these distressing symptoms, they would be given some of the routine pectate preparations and more reassurance. By the end of the third week after having been starved, given anti- spasmodics and various internal and external medications to no avail, they sought the aid of the gastroenterologist...
Instead of pain normally caused by a disease, a hyposensitive person may feel only pressure, burning sensations, numbness, prickling, tingling. "Such symptoms as pruritus and ticklishness need special study in this connection," says Dr. Libman. "That ticklishness may represent pain is suggested by the observation that pressure over a diseased organ may elicit laughter in a hyposensitive patient instead of pain...
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