Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1896 — WHY LATIN IS USED. [ARTICLE]

WHY LATIN IS USED.

Good Bessons for a ©actor’s Writing a Prescription la a Dead Language. •‘Why doesn’t the doctor 'write his prescription in English instead of Latin?” asked a man ( of a druggist, whose reply the New York, Herald publishes: In the first plate, Latin is a more ex* act and concise language than English, and being a dead language, does not change, as all living languages do. Then,, again, since a very large part of all drugs in use are botanical, they have in the pharmacopoeia the same names that they have in botany—the scientific names. Two-thirds ofsuch drugs havenlt any English names, and so couldn’t be written in English. But suppose doctors did write a prescription in English for an uneducated patient. The patient it, thinks he remembers it, and so tries to get it filled from I 'memory the second time. Suppose, for instance,, it called for iodide of potassium, and he got it confused with cyanide of potassium. He could safely take ten grains of the first, but one grain of the seeond would-kiU-him. That’s an extreme case, but it will serve for an illustration. Don’t you see how the Latin is a protection and a safeguard to the patient? Prescriptions in Latin he can’t read, and consequently does not try to remember. Now for a final reason. Latin is a language that is used by scientific men the world over, and no other language is. You can get a Latin prescription filled in any country on the face of the earth where there is a drug* store. We had a prescription here the other day which we had put up originally, and which'had since been stamped by druggists in London, Par is, Berlin, Constantinople, Cairo and Calcutta. What good would nn English prescription be in St. Petersburg?