FROM THE HISTORY OF ROMANIAN MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY. FOREIGN INFLUENCES
FROM THE HISTORY OF ROMANIAN MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY. FOREIGN INFLUENCES

Summary/Abstract: Since the early times of human history, the medical act developed in parallel with magic and other unscientific practices. The healing methods and the pain therapy would have two distinct features: the preservation of the Greek and Latin medical terminology in the learned medical circles, and the modest medical knowledge for the majority of the doctors. Medicine has done a long way through the dark ages of ignorance. In Romania, the popular medical language has been used until the Phanariot times, when the Greeks occupying high positions started to bring western teachers for their progeny and, in the 19th century, a number of youth from Romania went to French, German, Austrian and Italian universities. These exchanges caused the beneficial opening to French, German and Italian, which, after Greek and Latin, became the main academic languages in Europe. The translations from these languages, as well as the presence on Romanian territory of different representatives of these nations on one hand, and the emerging Romanian schools and universities on the other hand, have endowed Romanian language with a rich and ever updated medical terminology. During the last decades, however, English has become the Lingua Franca in Medicine. Romanian is one of the languages that have adopted a large number of English medical terms, as a result of the countless exchanges and contacts of our specialists in different medical fields and of our medical students with the English speaking medical community and media.

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