PEDIATRICS Vol. 44 No. 2 August 1969, pp. 300-301
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Ambulatory Pediatricians of North America, Unite! Run, Do Not Walk to Your Nearest Grammar School

Richard B. Goldbloom M.D.1

1 Department of Paediatrics, Dalhousie University, Faculty of Medicine, Halifax, Nova Scotia

The continuing "explosion" of scientific information and the arborization of medical specialties have caused physicians to invent names and catch phrases to define their new activities. Regrettably, much of this latter-day vocabulary is unmusical and clumsy. Some examples represent a downright assault on the English Ianguage. It is alarming that a profession whose members demand such precision in their work would tolerate such slapdash semantic shenanigans.

One has winced at such utterances as "examination of the chest showed no pathology;" one has cringed when otherwise esteemed colleagues have indulged in such semantic horrors as "coagulogram" and "febrile agglutinins;" but, in years to come the one atrocity whose promulgation may be remembered with particular mal de mer by the older pediatricians will be the term "ambulatory pediatrics."