Who decided to let the merchants names stuff?

0 Conversations

It is a very well known problem mongst
docteurs and nerzes that many medications have so similar names that you can kill someone by not putting your reading glazzes on and making sure the vowels are in the right place.


Mediccal speciealityes are also disgustingly similar in their nomenclature. Who, outside of a Latin nut, knows what the root wird "ped" means? Pediatrician, pediatrist, pederast... Ob? Obthalmalagist, obstretricians, oberasticlynopulia... why can't anyone just say 'foot doctor' or 'crotch doctor' or 'piss doctor' or 'baby catcher' or 'bowel twister'? I mean, isn't that what all those stupid foreign and ancient names really mean after all? If we can translate Shakespeare and Moliere into moderne Anglisch, why can't we do the same for something more important and immediately vital, like medicine or medicine? And why the hell is the stuff in the bottle given the same name as the arcane practice of undertreating and overbilling? Is there such a lack of words to go around that the same one has to do double duty?

If you have ever consulted and been insulted by a pharmacopeia, or, as it is called in the US, a Physicians Desk Reference, then you will have been absolutely flummoxed by the idiotic sameness undesigned by generations of morons with pencils and blank pads who are paid to make new pills and capsules DISTINCTIVE. Everything looks like anything else. Pills for the same illness do not even vaguely resemble each other. Instead, they look a whole lot like pills for something else. OR, they look like candy. What is the point of all this sameness and confusion? Are there supposed to be incidents where someone with the sniffles gets given a capsule that will kill them within a week but will perforate their spleen first?

Who decided to let manufacturers and marketters name things? Our diktinarys are full of wirds that used to be trademarks but have become household names. How many fortunes have been slirped down the drain of jurisimprudence by decades of fighting off pretenders to a name that shouldn't have been used for a product in the first place?
Anyone heard of Dove soap and Peace cigarettes and Hello Kitty! vibrators?


Bookmark on your Personal Space


Conversations About This Entry

There are no Conversations for this Entry

Entry

A25149396

Infinite Improbability Drive

Infinite Improbability Drive

Read a random Edited Entry


Written and Edited by

Disclaimer

h2g2 is created by h2g2's users, who are members of the public. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not those of the Not Panicking Ltd. Unlike Edited Entries, Entries have not been checked by an Editor. If you consider any Entry to be in breach of the site's House Rules, please register a complaint. For any other comments, please visit the Feedback page.

Write an Entry

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."

Write an entry
Read more