Preface
Great numbers of people, especially medical men, have written to me asking me to continue the short studies of great men of the past that I began inPost Mortem; and the result is the present volume.
Many reviewers complained thatPost Mortemcontained too much “medical jargon,” whatever that may mean. There is doubtfully such a thing as medical jargon; it is merely a method of expressing thoughts for which there is no English equivalent except by the method of a cumbrous sentence. For that reason I have tried to translate my thoughts into English whenever it is possible. If by mischance a technical term should have crept in, you will find most medical terms in any decent modern English dictionary; or failing that, they are all simply taken from the Greek. But there is another jargon than medical. There is the filthy jargon which insists on saying “the Red Plague” when we mean syphilis; or “in a certain interesting condition” when we mean to say “pregnant.”
That jargon I absolutely refuse to use. Those elderly people with fixed minds who prefer that sort of thing had better stick toLittle Arthuror something equally fictitious. As a doctor writing on very serious subjects I must claim the doctor’s privilege of writing with absolute frankness; without suspicion of coarseness.
And I beg you not to accept as diagnoses what are sheer speculations.