Terminologinė medicinos leksika lietuviškuose 1738–1831 metų Prūsijos valdžios įsakuose
Medical terminology in Lithuanian decrees of the Prussian authority between 1738 and 1831

Summary/Abstract: From the sixteenth century onwards the Prussian authorities issued decrees that were also translated into Lithuanian. 104 Lithuanian decrees were published in a large separate publication Prūsijos valdžios gromatos, pagraudenimai ir apsakymai lietuviams valstiečiams (1960). This article analyses 12 Lithuanian decrees on health issues from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The usual subjects of these decrees were transmittable diseases (smallpox, plague and cholera), accidents and the protection of babies’ lives. By issuing these decrees Prussian authorities sought ways to prevent the spread of diseases and to decrease illnesses, and tried to provide protection against other misfortunes. At the same time these decrees also had an educational character, the common people were given guidance as to how to provide first aid for a sick person or after an accident and how to behave in order to avoid such misadventures. Seven semantic groups of medical terminology are studied: 1) parts of the human body, organs and body fluids, 2) human diseases and their symptoms, 3) home-made means of treatment, 4) persons, 5) actions, conditions and features, 6) institutions, 7) documents. Most of the medical terminology consists of Lithuanian words (81%). The majority of them are still used in the standard language. A lot of Lithuanian words became the official medical terms (akis ‘eye’, galva ‘head’, kraujas ‘blood’, mėšlungis ‘cramp’, viduriavimas ‘diarrhea’, kūdikis ‘baby’, ligonis ‘patient’, gydymas ‘treatment’, nėštumas ‘pregnancy’). Words which did not become medical terms were recorded in various documents, survived in dialects and either did or did not become part of the standard language.

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