Doctors at Cleveland's Lakeside Hospital flocked to the operating room after reading the bulletin board notice: "Am-ygdalectomy today . . . 11a.m." Instead of a rare cutting job, the operation proved to be a routine tonsillectomy.
"Amygdalectomy" (literally, removal of almonds) has slipped into the dictionaries because medieval medicine men, looking at tonsils, were reminded of almonds. The Cleveland notice was posted by Dr. Normand L. Hoerr, professor of anatomy at Western Reserve University and managing editor of the New Gould Medical Dictionary, published this week (Blakiston Co.; $8.50). Dr. Hoerr thinks that all...
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