To the Editor: I was both delighted and a little perturbed to read the recent letter by Katherine Haley about her general practitioner father who outsmarted the Department of Education by a medical sleight of hand, stating that his patient had “non-pseudocyesis”.1 However, it was not Latin, but Greek, that did the trick. Despite Dr Haley’s background in Latin, he, like all physicians, had unwittingly used Greek during his medical course.
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- Private Practice, Wesley Medical Centre, Brisbane, QLD.
Correspondence: rogerallen@internode.on.net
- 1. Haley KA. Patient privacy and Latin: my father’s story [letter]. Med J Aust 2007; 186: 328. <MJA full text>
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