Postmortem medicine--an essential new new subspecialty.

used is a reflection of the use of euphemisms in medicine. Who but the gastroenterologist could see a foodstuff in a pathological specimen of stool as in redcurrant jelly or chocolate ? This last explanation may be considered the most likely, since, in dealing with unpleasantness, a natural defence mechanism is sublimation -to turn the unpleasant into something much more appealing. In other words, we suggest that some doctors are obsessed with the basic human instinct of eating and drinking and would prefer to reflect on the pleasures of life while following less aesthetic pursuits. Gastroenterologists may really be gastrologists at heart. It is doubtful whether there will ever be SI units of description to replace food terms in medicine. We recommend, however, that all doctors periodically review their own use of these descriptive terms to ensure that others derive a similar understanding as the user-for example, would doctors nowadays recognise the inside of a nutmeg if they saw one, since nutmeg is presented ground-up, packaged in little bottles in many countries? How many know what an oasthouse is, let alone what is its smell? Who in Britain is familiar with the taste of maple syrup ? As may be expected in English medical publications, the food terms employed show a strong regional and temporal bias. But does every,one outside England know what a strawberry is ? Yet, if strawberry gall bladder were called equally accurately a lychee gall bladder many people who had never seen a fresh lychee would be totally misled if they imagined that the tinned lychee has the same appearance. Since the purpose of descriptive terminology is to convey accurately the meaning to other doctors throughout the world, any new attempts to introduce culinary terminology in medicine should be done with caution and the terminology should be kept simple rather than exotic.