LETTER
Adult (Not Internal) Medicine
Lee Roof, MD
1 June 1998 | Volume 128 Issue 11 | Page 958
TO THE EDITOR:
In his editorial on adult medicine, Dr. Goldman [1] struggles to find an appropriate title for the physician who would specialize in the study of adult medicine. I have problems with the term adultist because it invokes the image of an adulterer. Other terms, such as adult doctor and adult physician, prompt the observation that most doctors and physicians are indeed adults.
One way to settle this dilemma would be to rename the entire specialty by using adult (from the Latin adultus) as the root term. Two possibilities would be adultology, with the appropriate specialist being an adultologist, and adultics, with the specialist being an adultician. These terms share similarities with terms of other medical specialties and use the appropriate suffixes to denote the specialist.
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Author and Article Information
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Whidbey Island Internal Medicine; Coupeville, WA 98239
1. Goldman L. Adult (not internal) medicine [Editorial]. Ann Intern Med. 1997; 127:835-6.
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