Gastrology: the use of culinary terms in medicine.

In the era of the SI unit everything in medicine is supposed to be accurately measured and standardised. Nevertheless, medicine remains essentially a descriptive science, particularly where the communication of appearance is concerned: whether abnormal physical signs, techniques of surgery, radiological shadows, or pathological abnormalities of organs or cells. The frequency with which allusions are made in medical writing to food and drink is impressive. We have culled 99 items of food and distilled 22 beverage-related items from various publications, and present an analysis of this harvest. Fruit The more delectable the fruit the more likely it is to be mentioned, although most of the references are to temperate fruits. The strawberry seems to lend itself particularly to descriptive analogy: easily remembered are the strawberry nose (rhinophyma) and naevus (cavernous haemangioma), as well as the strawberry gall bladder (cholesterolosis). In addition, a strawberry tongue is seen, with a coating, in scarlet fever; when this coating disappears-uncovering congested, oedematous papillae resulting in a darker red colour-a raspberry tongue is produced. The cutaneous lesions of secondary (framboesiform) yaws are evidently thought to resemble the raspberry, as does enteroteratoma or raspberry tumour. A single angioma of the retinal vessels may also produce a raspberry appearance. All kinds of berries are mentioned and they seem to lend themselves to vivid analogy. There is the blackcurrant rash seen with xeroderma pigmentosum. Abnormal teeth due to congenital syphilis are known as mulberry molars. Indeed, the mulberry is surprisingly popular-as morula (Latin), the early stage of the dividing fertilised ovum, as the mulberry bladder calculus composed of calcium oxalate, the mulberry cell (a vacuolated plasma cell), or with the mulberry rash of typhus. A non-specific berry is the description applied to the aneurysmal dilatation of major intracerebral arteries. Staphylococci and Streptococci also resemble berries, their names coming from kokkus, Greek for berry. References to grapes are more common than to wine: there are racemose glands, grape endings of axons, and Carswell's grapes-where there are masses of tubercles in primary tuberculosis clustered around the finer bronchioles. The derivation of botryoid rhabdomyosarcoma of children is from the Greek for bunches of grapes. In the eye, occlusion of the central retinal artery produces a cherry-red spot; a cherry-red spot may also be seen in Tay-Sachs disease. Peau d'orange is seen in the skin with lymphatic Gastrology (1810): The science of catering for the stomach (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). permeation by …