Words from the Collegiate III

1. An omasum, pronounced oh MAY sum, is "the third chamber of the ruminant stomach, situated between the reticulum and the abomasum." I am most fascinated not with what the smallest stomach, containing numerous tightly packed leaves or laminae, does but what it also is called. Other names for it include the manyplies, psalterium, bible, and fardel. Huxley gave the following explanation for its name as psalterium in an 1871 quotation: "When this portion of the stomach is slit open, longitudinally, the lamellae fall apart like leaves of a book, when it has received the fanciful name of the Psalterium from anatomists, while butchers give it that of Manuplies"--i.e., many folds. Let's move on.

2. I am afraid I have to spend some time on omeprazole, a word coined only in 1981 to describe an inhibitor of acid secretion in the stomach. It is given orally in the treatment of ulcers and gastro-esophageal reflux. While we are at it, we also have benzimidozole and metronidozole. Metronidozole, named in 1960, is a drug used to treat vaginal trichomoniasis, amebiasis and bacterial infections. All of these are good words, even though the situation they treat definitely isn't good. For some reason I also ran into the word enantiomer when learning about omeprazole, though I can't quite remember why. An enantiomer is either of a pair of chemical compounds not superimposible on a mirror-image of themselves. When I learn chemistry much better, I will be able to tell you why this seems to be important. Oh, the best example in nature of an enantiomorph are our two hands. They wouldn't fit into a mold which fits the other, but one is identical to the mirror image of the other. Enough. Let's move on.

3. An onium is a compound containing complex cations (positively charged ion) of the kind with names ending in onium. I never took organic chemistry, so I will bow out right here.

4. We continue our scientific nightmare terminology with opsonin, which may be defined as a "substance (often an antibody) in blood serum which combines with bacteria or other foreign cells and renders them more susceptible to phagocytosis." The latter has nothing to do with sexual orientation, I assure you; it has everything to do with the way by which a cell incorporates solid particles. Dr. Elie Metschnikoff's lucky discovery of phagocytosis of bacteria early in the 1880s was summarized in the Times of London in 1891: "Dr. Metschnikoff had elaborated and supported by great research his theory of phagocytosis, according to which there was a veritable struggle for existence, a battle a outrance between the cells of the body and the invading micro-organisms." I am sure I would like to know much more about this, but not now...

5. We can define opuntia much more quickly. It is a large genus of American cactus bearing spines or prickly hairs. Both "prickly pears" and "chollas" are found in its 250+ species. The Wikipedia article on the opuntia has all kinds of interesting words to describe the "fruit" of it ("tuna"), the Sicilian name for it ("ficcudinia" or "Indian fig") and the edible young stem segments, called "nopales." Here is a picture of my favorite opuntia--the "Bunny Ears."

6. Rappee, pronounced rah PAY, is a "pungent snuff made from dark tobacco leaves." As the OED says, it was originally obtained by "rasping a piece of tobacco." To "rasp" means to "scratch" or "rub" or "abrade" with a coarse file. This web site tells the fascinating story of snuff and Snuffers (those who indulge).

7. Ratine, pronunced ra tuh NAY, is a rough bulky fabric usually woven loosely in plain weave from ratine yarns. Here is a picture of the weave.

8. Rauwolfia is a tropical plant of the genus so called, belonging to the family Apocynaceae, and it bears small white flowers and red or black berries. It was named after Leonhard Rauwolf (d. 1596), a German physician and botanist, though I don't know exactly who named it after him or why. Mysteries abound when you try to scratch a little beneath the surface of life. Rauwolfia, consisting of about 85 species, is used both in conventional Western medicine as well as Ayurveda and folk medicine. The popular drug reserpine is an alkaloid first isolated from Rauwolfia serpentina and is used as an antihypertensive drug--i.e., it reduces blood pressure. The name was first used around 1954. The Wikipedia article introduces me to a number of other terms, bioactive chemicals, which various species of rauwolfia contain. These words will have to be learned sometime: ajmalicine, deserpidine, rescinnamine, serpentinine and yohimbine. Pictures of rauwolfia abound on the Net. It includes both plants/shrubs and trees.

9. Finally, let's end with realgar, which sounds like a super-charged breakfast cereal but is, in fact, an "orange-red mineral consisting of arsenic sulfide and having a resinous luster." One web site says that the finest location to collect this mineral is in King County, WA--near Seattle. Here is a description of it, and you can find pictures throughout the web. It is called an "oddball" among the sulfides, but I will have to study a great deal more to tell you why this is the case.

Let that suffice for our verbal journey for today. Much more awaits us tomorrow.

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