DRAKE
and
DRAKE

Saunders Pharmaceutical Word Book

Sloane’s Medical Word Book

This 4th edition represents a major revision of Sheila Sloane’s The Medical Word Book. The new edition (1500 pages) is still organized by specialty, with words appearing in more than one section if they apply to more than one specialty, but extensive updates have been made to the content.

I expanded the use of phonetic spellings, including some eponyms (e.g., Chvostek has three phonetic spellings). I have occasionally included clues for the use of terms to help readers distinguish, for example, between nouns and adjectives (mucus/mucous), common nouns and eponyms (Green, Bar), homonyms (principal/principle), anatomy and pathogen (pediculus/ Pediculus), or anatomical and surgical terms (suture).

I have added about 200 nonmedical terms frequently used in medical reports as well as about 90 frequently misspelled English words; most of these appear in General Medical Terms, a few in relevant specialty sections. Irregularly formed plurals are included alphabetically with the notation (plural of...) and also in parentheses following the singular form. Common units of measure are followed by the appropriate abbreviation. These latter two features are not found in most medical spellers.

Style has been updated. For example, the possessive has been dropped on eponyms, periods removed from uppercase abbreviations, and spaces have been removed from abbreviations containing an ampersand. When subscripts, superscripts, or special characters are part of a term, an alternative method for transcribing has been included.

The General Surgical Terms section contains primarily surgical hardware. Other surgical terms, like titles of operations, appear in the appropriate specialty section. The Drugs and Chemistry section has been removed, but the Dentistry section has been restored and updated, and a new section, Oncology and Hematology has been added. Neurology and Psychiatry have been separated, and other specialty sections have been expanded and the titles changed.