Natural Hygiene

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Hygienic Review

Vol. XXVIII March, 1967 No. 7

What Is In A Name?

Herbert M. Shelton

We often hear the remark that " there is nothing in a name. " Is it true that

there is nothing in a name? A name is a mere word and it may seem that one word

is as good as another. But words have both denotative and connotative meanings

and they carry these meanings with them at all times, so that it does make a

difference 'what name we use to designate a thing. When we take into

consideration the fact that when a thing is misnamed, it may be received by the

unwary and uninformed as desirable, whereas, if it is correctly named, it will

be rejected, we can understand that a thing wrongly named may maintain its hold

upon the public mind for a long time and do much mischief in the meantime.

Names, in other words, may be deceptive; they may hide the true character of a

thing.

No better example of the power of false labels to deceive can be offered than

that of drugs. If they were all called, as they all are, poisons, they would be

immediately condemned and rejected; but they are not called poisons. Instead,

they are named medicines. Just as we see valuable truths rejected simply because

they are introduced under an unpopular name, so we observe the acceptance of the

most virulent poisons because they come to us labeled as medicines. Perfume

manufacturers are well aware that they can sell more of a certain perfume if

they market it under one name than under another; lip-stick manufacturers find

that not only the name but the showyness of the container affects the sales of

their product. Man is deceived by the packaging as well as by the name.

Due, in great measure, to this power of names to deceive, poisons have long

retained their hold upon the public confidence, because they have been called

medicines. The toxicologist and the chemist may list them as poisons; in the

drug store, they may be contained in bottles, bearing a skull and cross bones;

but in the sick room, they are introduced as medicines. Iodine, potassium,

mercury, arsenic, quinine, prussic acid, strychnine, aspirin, sulfonamides,

antibiotics, cortisone, etc., may be labeled poison; but when they are put up in

ampules, draughts, pills, powders and potions to be given to the sick, they are

no longer correctly labeled — they are called medicines and are administered to

cure disease. The term, medicine, helps to blind both the physician and the

patient to the true character of the poison being administered as a cure.

Suppose, instead of giving his drugs under the name of medicine, the physicians

were required to use the word poison every time he now uses the term medicine;

what would be the effect upon both the physician and his trusting victim? If,

when the prospective patient inquires of the physician how he is to be treated,

the physician were always to reply: " I am going to give you a dose of this

poison three times a day, and, if after a time, the results are not

satisfactory, I am going to switch to this other poison, " would not the patient

be less ready to take it and the physician himself less ready to prescribe it.

But in the mind of the physician, as in the mind of the patient, the drug is a

medicine; hence, both of them impose their confidence in it.

Remarkable, isn't it, how the human mind can be so easily cheated by a mere

change of name. If the physician and the patient is familiar with the Latin name

of the drug and understands that it is a medicine, no matter how virulent it may

be, he is likely to forget that the substance logically comes under the plain

English name for all such substances — poison. We are fooled by names; there is

more in a name than we have recognized.

All drugs are poisonous. All drugs, even the least virulent of them, occasion,

when administered, consequences that are far from desirable. In saying this, I

do not have reference solely to those effects that follow their administration

that have been labeled untoward side effects and those that are frankly called

their toxic effects. I include in these undesirable consequences, their alleged

physiological and their alleged therapeutic effects. I insist that all of their

consequences are evil, that there is no good in poisoning.

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Peace be with you,

Don " Quai " Eitner

" Spirit sleeps in the mineral, breathes in the vegetable, dreams in the animal

and wakes in man. "

Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses. ~Jean

Baptiste Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire

The obstacle is the path. ~Zen Proverb

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