To the Editor: My father, a retired general practitioner now 86 years old, continues to lament the fact that Latin terms have fallen out of use in medical practice. Even today, he can still recite the conjugation of Latin verbs without a mistake, and he likes to tell the story of how Latin helped a young teacher in the 1950s.

Although World War II had made it acceptable for single and widowed women to work (but not for equal pay with men!), women who continued to work after getting married were considered to be “stealing jobs” from men who needed to support their families. Today, a pregnancy without a marriage certificate does not even cause a raised eyebrow, but, back then, it condemned a girl to a lifetime of discrimination and gossip. Single pregnant girls went to stay with distant relatives or went to religious homes for “wayward girls”.

One day, a GP colleague of my father telephoned seeking advice. He had a young, single, very distressed teacher in his surgery and he had just confirmed her pregnancy. She had told an all too common story about being “unofficially engaged” to her university-student boyfriend and not having the money to get married. Apparently, on finding out about the suspected pregnancy, the boyfriend had decided that this was the time to end their unofficial engagement. The young teacher was still unsure whether to have the baby adopted, try to find a supportive relative, or bring up the child herself.

The patient, being a full-time teacher with the Department of Education, was one of the few “lucky women” for whom society considered it acceptable to work and earn a living while married or with children. It was therefore very important that she keep her job. The medical certificate for her employer was to be a very important piece of paper.

My father advised his colleague to put the following words on the patient’s medical certificate: “The patient is suffering from non-pseudocyesis and will be unfit for work for 3 months”. The colleague was delighted with this diagnosis.

The teacher came to see her GP a short time later and reported that departmental leave had been approved and that her teaching colleagues had wished her well in her recovery. My father’s colleague continued to chuckle about the diagnosis and enjoyed providing the additional leave certificates until full-term delivery, when the non-pseudocyesis miraculously disappeared.