>And is there a reason they HAVE to use Latin instead of plain ole English?

It harkens back to a day when prescriptions were written in Latin, which was the language of the learned class. There are many more of them that become second nature as one goes through med or nursing school. To this day when taking notes I use a c with a line over it for with (an abbreviation for the Latin word cum) and an s with a line over it for without (sine). And I went to neither med school nor nursing school. I was married to an RN and picked up some bad habits from her.

And that's what these things really are is habit. I've no idea why the medical fraternity holds onto the Latin stuff when the legal profession has made great strides to get rid of many of the phrases they used to toss about with great abandon.

Some things still come through in that field, though. I printed out a copy of the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, and one of the first words on the first page is certiorari (let it be certified, I think.) If you go back say 150 to 200 years and try to read a court decision from that era you have to know a lot of Latin to get through it successfully. A part of it is the fact that use of arcane language makes it more difficult for people to fake their way into the profession, I'm certain. But a great deal of it is tradition.


TEd