Resuscitating dead languages

Abstract

A former colleague is sceptical of the prevailing passion for literature in an already overcrowded medical curriculum. This curricular fad relates largely to living languages but perhaps dead ones have more to offer directly since so many medical terms come from Latin or ancient Greek, with the occasional mongrel admitting to both types of parent. Latin is experiencing something of a revival as a subject for serious study, and it lives on in the everyday language of much of southern Europe. And Greek? My phrase book asserts that “Modern Greek is not nearly as difficult as it looks”. Possibly, but ancient Greek looks more dead than old Latin. To the burden of alien letters and baffling accents has to be added changes in pronunciation. Physicians-in-the-making may pick up all sorts of things on vacation by the Mediterranean but not, I fear, medical etymology. The science writer Lancelot Hogben tried to present the derivation of common scientific terms in a systematic way, but his book is out of print. Before a classically educated generation of physicians dies away entirely perhaps one of them could do something thorough for medicine, as an educational tool. Ancient civilisations do grip the imagination, and not just in the Old World. Roman remains uncovered in modern Londinium regularly attract media coverage, but the work that caught attention at the Classical Association’s meeting in Manchester last week was that by an American academic who aired parallels between a former US president and the sexual romps of long-dead emperors. And it was a US project that found a wrecked ship from over two millennia ago, while looking for a missing submarine deep down in mid-Mediterranean. When last I saw the Aegean it looked more like the froth on lager, but around the time of the Trojan wars it was a “wine dark sea”. Poor translation, colour blindness—or did wine in Homer’s day really look like that? The Nauticos project has identified amphorae in this ruined ship—indeed the Mediterranean sea-bed is littered with these huge pots. Those accident-prone ancient merchant seamen did not hug the coastline, as long suspected, but intrepidly carried wine (and olive oil too) across far deeper waters, spilling some en route.