Language Log

I never dreamed that I would be subjected to an MRI or a CAT scan or other sophisticated diagnostic system that enables medical specialists to see detailed tomographic images from inside your body.

For both of these devices, the patient lies on a flat surface and is inserted in a tube-like scanner.  They both make conspicuous noises all the while you are inside of them, and that is a normal part of their function. The CAT scan makes clicking, buzzing, humming, and whirring sounds.  The MRI is stranger.  You feel like you're going in a long winding, curving tunnel.  The one I was in made me think it had white brick walls interspersed with red glazed bricks.  I was a bit afraid that I would go so deep inside that I might never come out.

At BMR, the first thing the doctors, nurses, and techs ask patients when they interview them is "Do you feel any pain?"  And they want you to quantify it on a scale of 1-3-5 / small-medium-big.

What is pain?  Physical, mental?

I tend to think of it rather as Sanskrit duḥkha (/ˈduːkə/ दुःख) than as English "pain", because the former is more all encompassing (corporeally, spiritually) than the latter, which I feel is more physical.

That's the name of a very fine health care facility nestled in the wooded hills of Philadelphia's northwestern suburbs — Malvern, Tradyffrin, Bryn Mawr ("large hill"), Bala Cynwyd (named for towns in Wales), Haverford, Narberth, Radnor, Berwyn, Merion, and Gwynedd.

My inclination is to abbreviate the name somehow — BMRH, Bryn Mawr RH, etc. — but the people who work at Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital tend not to do that.  They want to keep the word "rehab" in their habitual reference.

On the other hand, I think "rehab" is too casual and informal for an institution of such complexity and excellence.  By nature, "rehabilitation" is hexasyllabically cumbersome and "hospital" is trisyllabically unglamorous.

Never mind what Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation Hospital is called on a day-to-day basis, it's a thoroughly admirable place.

The word "exceedances" occurs 7 times in this relatively short article:

"Lead in water at Perth Children's Hospital no risk to patient safety, WA health minister says"
Mya Kordic, ABC News (Australia), 9/10/25

Here are two examples:

"Exceedances are decommissioned while they undergo remediation," Ms Hammat said.

"I have been advised by the Chief Health Officer that there is no risk to the safety of patients or staff as a result of these exceedances."

Long ago (half a century), I had occasion to translate the word "masochism" into Chinese.  At that stage, I wasn't even sure what "masochism" itself meant.  Supposedly it was "the madness of deriving pleasure from pain", I guessed especially sexual pleasure — something like that.

Wanting to give the most accurate possible translation into Chinese, I thought I should begin by investigating the etymology of the word, as is my bent.  So I pulled out my trusty 1960 Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, my lexical vade mecum.  Here's what it had (has — I still keep it on my desk):

[After L. von Sacher-Masoch (1835-1895), Austrian novelist, who described it.]  Med. Abnormal sexual passion characterized by pleasure in being abused by one's associate; hence any pleasure in being abused or dominated.

My recollection is that, at the time, I couldn't readily find an English-Chinese dictionary that had the term "masochism" in it, so I may have made up this rendering for it myself, although I'm not absolutely certain that I did so:

zìnüèdài kuáng 自虐待狂 ("madness of self abuse") (129 ghits)

Be that as it may, there's no doubt that the most common translation of "masochism" in Chinese today is this:

shòunüèkuáng 受虐狂 ("madness of enduring / accepting / receiving abuse") (13,700.000 ghits)

It seems that nobody attempted to render "masochism" in such a way that it would reflect the fact that it derived from a person's surname.

VHM:  This is a dialog held between ChatGPT and TK, who printed it out and sent it to me.

The unretouched dialog, which lasted about 20 minutes, is very long.  If you don't have time to read all of it, please look at the last paragraph of this post, where I give my takeaway assessment of the implications it holds for AI.

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Poor cattle, they suffer for / from their gallstones in more ways than one.  If you want to know why, read the previous Language Log posts on bezoars, for which see "Selected readings" below.

For linguists, one of the most interesting things about the Chinese term for "bezoar", niúhuáng 牛黃 ("cow yellow"), is that it is among the earliest attestable borrowings into Sinitic from Sanskrit, viz., gorocanā गोरोचना ("bright yellow orpiment prepared from the bile of cattle; yellow patch for the head of a cow; bezoar") — already in pre-Buddhist times.

Because they are so expensive and sought after by believers in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), bezoars are back in the news again:

Cattle Gallstones, Worth Twice as Much as Gold, Drive a Global Smuggling Frenzy
A prized ingredient in China’s $60 billion traditional medicine industry, gallstones have become the must-have item among underground traders and armed robbers in Brazil

By Samantha Pearson, Wall Street Journal (Jan. 19, 2025)

A Brazilian pasture holds a potential fortune on the hoof.

shaing tai suggests this "possible clue about the mystery":

"11 Wàn yuán yī kē Angōng niúhuáng wán, guòqí 'shényào' chéng tiānjià cángpǐn hūyoule shéi”

Wèishéme guòqí de Angōng niúhuáng wán rúcǐ zǒuqiào? Shāndōng zhōng yīyào dàxué yào xuéyuàn shēngyào xì zhǔrèn Lǐ Fēng jiàoshòu fēnxī, xiànzài shìchǎng shàng zhǔyào shōugòu 1993 nián qián shēngchǎn de Angōng niúhuáng wán, qí zhǔyào yuányīn jiùshì,1989 nián wǒguó shíshī “Yěshēng dòngwù bǎohù tiáolì”, xiàndìng 1993 nián yǐhòu, yěshēng xīniújiǎo bèi mínglìng jìnzhǐ yòng yú zhìyào yuánliào, yuán yǒu de shèngyú xījiǎo yuánliào bèi fēngcún, yòng yú yánjiū děng tèshū yòngtú. Shēngchǎn chǎngjiā yúshì gǎi yòng shuǐniú jiǎo de nóngsuō fěn tìdài tā. Cǐwài, tiānrán niúhuáng, tiānrán shèxiāng yě hěn ángguì, yóuyú yuánliào xīquē, xiànzài de Angōng niúhuáng wán duō gǎi yòng réngōng shèxiāng děng tìdài pǐn.

From Michael David Johnson:

I found this sign (image below) on Queen's Road West near Exit A of the Sai Ying Pun MTR in Hong Kong. The shop was closed but I think it's a Chinese Medicine shop. Google gives me no results for "recycled bezoar" or "bezoar reciclado," so I seek your knowledge. Bad translation or just something that's not (ever) written in English? I assume from the Portuguese that this must be popular in Macau too?

I just received the following book:  P.N. Singer and Ralph M. Rosen, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Galen (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2024).  The volume has 29 chapters, the last of which is "Galen in Premodern Tibet and China: Impressions and Footprints" (pp. 658-674) by Dror Weil and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim.  Naturally, this chapter is of great interest to me.  It mentions many parallels and correspondences between Galenic and Sinitic medical practice and thought (e.g., humors, colors, purging, etc.), much of it passing through what is called "Islamicate" (Huíhui 回回) medicine and pharmaceutics, and through Persian literature as well.  The authors also take into account Sogdian, Syriac, and Sanskrit sources.

Of all the instances of Galenic thought and practice in China mentioned by the authors, the one that struck me most powerfully was this:

One record gives an account of a surgery on a boy’s head that experts in Islamicate medicine (Huihui yiguan 回回醫官) performed in order to extract a tumor. The tumor, interestingly, is described in this Chinese record by the term little cancer (xiao xie 小蟹), a literal translation of the Arabic sarṭān (cancer). (p. 664)

[Warning:  graphic content.  If you are squeamish about detailed descriptions of wounded, putrefying human flesh, and excruciating medical treatment without anesthesia, it would be best to avoid reading the ending portion of this post.]

I met a retired teacher here in Gothenburg, Nebraska.  His name is Sydney Kite and he is 81 years old.  I asked him how he got such an unusual surname, and he told me a long story about that, which I shall reduce to a few sentences.

Syd's ancestors were originally English, but to escape religious persecution for their heretical beliefs at the hands of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), they fled England and went to the area of Germany that we now refer to as Alsace-Lorraine.  There, they underwent thorough Germanization.

This is one of the most novel theories on the Voynich manuscript (Beinecke MS408; early 15th c.) that I've ever encountered, and there are many.

The Voynich Manuscript, Dr Johannes Hartlieb and the Encipherment of Women’s Secrets, by Keagan Brewer and Michelle L Lewis, Social History of Medicine, hkad099 (22 March 2024)

Keywords:  Voynich manuscript, Dr Johannes Hartlieb, women’s secrets, sex, gynaecology

A guest post for The Digital Orientalist (4/10/24), under The Magic of Philology and Indexing, Polyglot Asian Medicines (Foundational Resources and Digital Tools), by Michael Stanley-Baker, Christopher S.G. Khoo and Faizah Zakariah (all three are based at academic institutions in Singapore), "Tracking Drug Names Across Language, Time, Space and Knowledge Domains to Produce New Visions of Traditional Medicine".

This is a richly detailed article with many links and citations.  I will not attempt to cover, much less extensively quote, lengthy portions.  Instead, I will begin with the authors' general introduction, note the main sections of the article, refer to the graphs, and quote one typical section to show what the authors' approach can accomplish.