One of the most glorious aspects of our heritage in Britain is the English language itself. Based on Latin, with contributions from Old German, Saxon and Old Norse, with a fair sprinkling of French, it reflects the long history of the different peoples who have invaded and settled in these islands. In later centuries the language was taken to the New World and Australasia by settlers from Britain. By now, English is probably spoken in more places around the world than any other language - a fact that is sometimes used as an excuse by British people for not bothering to learn anyone else's language. Our language is also constantly changing, and collections of new words are published regularly by the Oxford English Dictionary. I once heard that Dame Marghanita Laski, who edited the OED for many years, confessed in a radio interview following her retirement that she had made up some words specially for the dictionary. If true, it means that scholars using the full OED (which runs to many volumes and includes all words known to have ever been used in English) will never be absolutely sure that a particular word is a real one and not one of Dame Marghanita's practical jokes!
English has many peculiarities which may or may not be shared with other languages. One of these is the mystery of the vanished positive. We have numerous words which have negative connotations but for which there is no corresponding opposite. We hear of people behaving in a ruthless manner but they are never ruthful (even my [American] spell-checker did not like that one). Likewise Peter Mandelson's unfortunate gibe about "chinless wonders" - they would never be described as "chinful". A competition in the family to see who can make the longest list of such words might be a useful way of staving off the post-Christmas lunch torpor.
The richness of our language has been an inspiration to so many writers down the centuries - Chaucer and Shakespeare to name but two. My elder daughter recently gave me a book about J. R. R. Tolkien's philological experiments which resulted in ‘The Hobbit' and ‘Lord of the Rings', and a fascinating read it is, too. In addition to the places and people of Middle Earth, Tolkien developed a whole language (the Language of the High Elves) which some Tolkien enthusiasts actually learn and speak. Many of the words are based on Early English.
One of the most fruitful sources of new words for the English language is jargon. Often reviled, but very useful to its initiates, jargon is a kind of verbal shorthand. In medicine much is made of the use of initial letters. No clinical pharmacist, for instance, would fail to associate "u's and e's" with "urea and electrolytes" or LFT with liver function test. Computing has introduced its own, sometimes bizarre forms of jargon, much of which has become part of the everyday language of the English-speaking world. A hardware store these days is more likely to sell computer equipment than a kettle or a packet of screws. A problem only really occurs with jargon when its prime purpose appears to be to mystify those not "in the know" rather than to help its users in their work. Some fields of study seem to be more prone to this than others, and one such is, allegedly, the social sciences.
If it is, indeed, true that some disciplines are rife with jargon whose primary purpose is to mystify, then it should be possible to write something in the jargon of the discipline which is actually meaningless, but gets published within the discipline. To test this hypothesis, Alan Sokal (professor of physics at New York university) wrote a spoof article called "Transgressing the boundaries: towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity" and managed to get it published in what Philip Howard of the Times described as a "po-faced journal". Professor Sokal subsequently revealed what he had done, to the chagrin of the social sciences establishment and the amusement of everyone else. To see the full story, including all 44 pages of the original article, point your web browser at www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/. (Now, there's jargon for you.)
Does this have a lesson for pharmacy? Well, in recent weeks we have seen some interesting debates on the philosophy of pharmaceutical care. This began with an account of Professor Nick Barber's lecture (PJ, April 15, p603), in which he appeared to criticise the 1990 pharmaceutical care model developed in the United States by Hepler and Strand. There followed a response from Professor Douglas Hepler (PJ, May 6, p692) in which he found it necessary to raise five points in order to "restore some measure of intellectual balance" and in the same issue a letter from Professor Barber in which he complained of feeling "sniped at" and "lampooned" by the The Journal. There followed an elegant but quaintly worded letter from Mr John Gould (PJ, June 10, p880) in which he appeared to have imitated Dame Marghanita Laski in inventing some new words. (Surely, Mr Gould, should not "capsulise" be "encapsulate"?) Next, we heard from Mr David Sharpe (PJ, June 17, p915), who described Mr Gould's letter as "pretentious". I find myself in complete agreement with one point only in Mr Gould's letter, and that is that the debate so far on this topic has been generally vaporous and circumlocutory.
Now, the question that I ask is this: will someone be writing, and getting published, an article on the philosophy of pharmaceutical care along the lines of that by Professor Alan Sokal that I referred to above, or has it indeed already been written and published - somewhere?
Finally, back to my favourite small pharmacy where I do the odd locum. (Remember it? We sell bread and cat food.) One day last autumn an elderly man came into the pharmacy, purchased a bottle of milk and asked to speak to "the chemist" (myself at the time). He was very worried because his beloved grand-daughter had just started her first term at university and he had read about meningitis, which to him was a terrible disease that rampaged round universities and colleges killing students by the score. I told him about the national vaccination campaign, about the widespread distribution to students of leaflets telling them about the symptoms, and that tutors were advising their students to watch out for, and care for, one another. I also pointed out that, dangerous though meningitis could be, there were rarely many cases and treatment with an injection of penicillin, if prompt, was lifesaving. He left the pharmacy, clutching his milk (excellent source of dietary calcium and vitamins for the elderly), much relieved that his grand-daughter may be in no real danger. Now, what was that I heard about pharmaceutical care?