DIANA ŠILOBRITAITĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

Palmira Zemlevičiūtė. THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITHUANIAN MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES. DOCTORAL DISSERTATION. Vilnius, 2009, 282 pp.

On 25 June 2009, Palmira Zemlevičiūtė, an employee of the Terminology Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, successfully defended her doctoral dissertation The Development of Lithuanian Medical Terminology in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, in which the author examines approximately 7,500 different terms (or approximately 15,000 when each author’s usage is counted separately). The aim of the dissertation is to investigate, using descriptive and comparative methods, the composition, scope, semantics, origin, and development of medical terms from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. It discusses which medical concepts the terms designate. The terms are classified by origin, and the proportions of Lithuanian, borrowed, and mixed-origin terms are determined. It examines synonymy and variation among medical terms, and the relationship of the terms to spoken and written language. The dissertation author also considers the reasons why some terms did not become established in contemporary medical language.

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The work consists of an introduction, two main parts, and conclusions. At the end are lists of abbreviations, primary sources (383 entries), additional sources (59 entries), and literature (267 entries).

The work consists of an introduction, two main parts, and conclusions. At the end, it provides lists of abbreviations, primary sources (383 entries), supplementary sources (59 entries), and literature (267 entries).

The introduction explains the motives for choosing the period and topic, the research object, the aim, objectives, and methods of the work, and briefly reviews research on Lithuanian medical terminology. It introduces some of the terminological concepts used in the dissertation – a term, a medical term, a synonym, a variant, a nomenclature item, and a hybrid. The introduction also presents the defended propositions and a list of the author’s publications on the dissertation topic.

The first part, “The origins of Lithuanian medical terminology up to the mid-nineteenth century,” consists of two chapters and eight subsections. In the first chapter, Connections between folk medical terms and scientific medical terminology, the author writes about the role of folk language in Lithuanian terminology, the importance of folk medical terms to Lithuanian medical terminology, and the use of folk-language vocabulary in scientific medical terminology. This chapter examines in greater detail the terms in J. Basanavičius’s glossary of folk medical terms, Medega musu tautiszkai vaistinykystai. The second chapter, Medical vocabulary in Lithuanian writings up to the mid-nineteenth century, surveys medical vocabulary in Lithuanian writings of the sixteenth–seventeenth and eighteenth–mid-nineteenth centuries. It examines in greater detail medical vocabulary in Lithuanian-language Prussian government decrees concerning health matters.

The second part consists of two chapters and ten sections. The first chapter, “Lithuanian Publications and Medicine,” discusses books, booklets, and newspapers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that contain printed material on matters of health and treatment. The second chapter examines the semantics and origin of medical terms. By meaning, the author distinguished eight semantic groups: names of body parts and organs and the fluids they produce; diseases and their symptoms and pathological conditions; treatments; persons; treatment and other institutions and premises; actions and processes; states; properties; and names of fields of medical science and related sciences. By origin, medical terms are classified as Lithuanian, borrowed, or of mixed origin. This part also discusses synonymous and variant forms of medical terms. At the end of the work, the author presents detailed conclusions.

290 Diana Šilobritaitė |

P. Zemlevičiūtė’s dissertation supplements research into the history of Lithuanian terminology and is useful to researchers of Lithuanian medical history, compilers of bibliographic works, and Lithuanian lexicography. The medical terms collected may supplement the card index of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language with new words not previously included in it, or with terminological (medical) meanings of words already listed.

Received 2009-12-01

Diana Šilobritaitė

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius

Email: [email protected]

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